UP elections: Can 'Varanasi influence' help BJP improve its 2017 score in Phase 7 seats?

NEW DELHI: The battle for Uttar Pradesh has finally reached the seventh and final phase. Voting is under way in 54 seats spread across 9 districts in eastern parts of the state.


The areas voting today include Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency and also Azamgarh, which is represented by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who is the principal challenger to the ruling BJP.


For the BJP, this was the area that had returned the least dividends in the 2017 elections, compared to the first 6 phases. And that perhaps explains why the entire party brass led by PM Modi has campaigned extensively in the last phase.

The BJP won 29 out of the 54 seats in the Phase 7 assembly constituencies. Compared to the party’s score in the first 6 phases, this was the least.

The BJP’s best performance was in the Phase 1 seats when it won 53 out of 58 seats and in Phase 4 it had won 50 out of the 59 seats.


The BJP would hope to make gains in the district of Azamgarh, where it could win only one of the 10 assembly seats.

The Samajwadi Party, which had won 11 seats in the region in the 2017 elections, would bank heavily on its allies to make some gains.

In five out of the 10 districts, Akhilesh Yadav’s party could not win even one seat. This includes Varanasi, Mau, Mirzapur, Sonbhadra.

In fact, the role of the allies, which had won 11 seats in 2017, would be important for both the BJP and the SP.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party had won 6 seats in the region and was runner-up in 14 others.


Change of seats

The Samajwadi Party would hope to repeat its 2012 performance in the region when it had won 34 seats and had restricted the BJP to just 4.

In 2017, the tables had turned completely. The BJP gained 25 seats while the SP lost 23.


BJP victory margin

The BJP may have won less number of seats compared to the earlier rounds, but its victory margin remained impressive. The ruling party had won 17 assembly seats with a margin of over 20,000 votes. Of these, in 11 seats the margin was over 40,000 votes.


Division of votes
In 2017, if there was one common theme across the various rounds of elections in UP besides the BJP’s dominance, it was the division of votes due to triangular contests.

In the seventh phase seats also the story was the same. In as many as 41 seats out of the 54, the victory margin was less than the votes polled by the party in the third position.

And once again, it was the BSP that played the lead role as spoilsport. However, unlike the other phases, here it ended up helping the SP more than the BJP. Division of votes by Mayawati’s party helped the SP in 10 seats and the BJP in 9. The SP, on the other hand, ended up helping the BJP in 8 seats.


It remains to be seen if Phase 7 continues to be the toughest one for the BJP or if PM Modi's special focus on Varanasi in the last five years has a ripple effect in the adjoining districts.

How the fortunes of parties changes in 2022 will be known on March 10 when the votes are counted.

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