The governing BJP suffered a major political upset in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday, when it lost the two prestigious Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur – vacated by none other than CM Yogi Adityanath and deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, respectively – which went to the polls on March 11.

In a surprise move a couple of days before voting, BSP supremo Mayawati had announced support to Samajwadi Party candidates in the bypolls for the seats. But an overconfident BJP did not give much credence to the alliance of the two major state opposition parties. Instead of changing its strategy on the two seats, party leaders just rejected it by calling it an “unholy alliance”.

The results have rattled and shocked the BJP. But perhaps the party’s central and state leadership could not read the writing on the walls.

They apparently did not take any lesson from a similar drubbing in 1993 at the hands of the SP-BSP combine, that too at a time when the BJP was riding high on the Ram Mandir wave after the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.

The BJP failed to understand the simple math of caste politics in UP, that the SP-BSP combine’s backward-Dalit-Muslim vote-bank is much bigger than its upper caste-backward vote-bank. The party leadership seems to have developed a myopic view after success in the 2014 and 2017 elections. The BJP perhaps remained under the false impression that Mayawati’s vote-bank is no more “transferable”. But Mayawati proved it wrong.

The BJP should also take lesson from another fact – that its crushing defeat came when Mayawati did not share the dais or launch a joint campaign with the SP during the bypolls.

There are, in fact, several reasons for the BJP’s debacle.

First, the selection of candidates in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur was wrong. In Gorakhpur, the party’s central leadership fielded Upendra Dutt Shukla against Adityanath’s wishes.

The choice of candidate was important as it was for the first time that a candidate from outside the famous Gorakhnath Peeth was to succeed five-time MP Yogi Adityanath. Since 1989, the Lok Sabha seat had been represented by the Mahant (head) of the temple – first by Mahant Avaidyanath and then by Yogi Adityanath for five consecutive terms.

But on the recommendation of the party’s organising secretary Sunil Bansal, imported by BJP national president Amit Shah from Rajasthan to look after Uttar Pradesh, Shukla was given the ticket, ignoring three names submitted by the UP CM. The reason was to placate Brahmins in the constituency who were annoyed with Adityanath promoting Thakurs only.

Shukla is a close associate of Union minister of state Shiv Pratap Shukla, once an arch rival of Adityanath. The Union minister had suffered a defeat in the Assembly elections when Adityanath had fielded a Hindu Mahasabha candidate, Dr Radhamohan Das.

The party made a similar mistake in Phulpur when it imported a candidate from Varanasi and fielded former mayor Kaushalendra Singh Patel against the wishes of the cadre.

Second, the BJP leadership failed to gauge that Mayawati’s support to SP had suddenly turned the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls into the “arithmetic of castes”. The backward-Dalit combine had pushed the saffron monk’s aggressive Hindutva and development plank onto the backburner. It was due to this reason that Adityanath’s 21 rallies in 15 days in Gorakhpur and Phulpur failed to cut any ice with voters who were sharply divided on caste lines.

Third, SP chief Akhilesh showed political maturity. He replicated Amit Shah’s UP experiment of 2017 of roping in the support of smaller parties. He not only entered into an alliance with Nishad Party and Peace Party ahead of the bypolls but also fielded Praveen Nishad, son of Nishad Party chief Dr Sanjay Nishad, on his party symbol. In Gorakhpur, the majority of the 2.5 lakh Nishad population used to support the Gorakhnath Peeth candidate but with the seat going out of the Peeth’s hands they voted for their caste member, Praveen Nishad.

Fourthly, Adityanath also ignored party cadre like Kalyan Singh did in 1991. “We had apprised the party leadership of the grievances of the party cadre in Phulpur and Gorakhpur well in advance. But they were not addressed. As a result, the cadre did not make efforts to take voters out, particularly in the urban pockets of Allahabad and Gorakhpur. Poor voter turnout cost us both seats,” a party functionary, who was handling social media for the elections, candidly admitted.

While Gorakhpur recorded only 47.45 percentage turnout, it was even lower in Phulpur – only 38 per cent. BJP supporters chose to enjoy the Sunday than to cast their votes.

If the Congress had also been part of the unprecedented opposition unity in Uttar Pradesh, the margin of win by the SP candidates would have been higher, much to the embarrassment of the BJP leadership.

The mood is upbeat in the opposition camp. Both Mayawati and Akhilesh have given the message that together they can successfully stop the BJP juggernaut. After tasting success in the bypolls and Sonia Gandhi’s recent dinner diplomacy, a bigger opposition alliance seems to be on the cards in Uttar Pradesh to challenge Amit Shah & Co in 2019.

Time for BJP to do some serious introspection.