The Congress has left the Uttar Pradesh by-polls, leaving the field open for the Samajwadi Party Supremo Akhilesh Yadav against the state-BJP led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has sole responsibility of redeeming BJP after Akhilesh Yadav took the saffron party to the cleaners in the Lok Sabha elections with his ‘Pichada Dalit Alpsankyak (PDA)’ axis of resistance.
The Samajwadi Party head has sworn to repeat his 2024 success in the 2027 assembly elections with the bypolls, set to take place on November 13, a stepping stone for the assembly polls. The Samajwadi Party chief is confidence-personified, his dependency on ‘PDA’ full and final, as he challenges Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to a do-or-die battle in the state which routinely elects prime ministers, from the first one to the latest one now residing at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg. Yadav believes, for good reason, that ‘Pichada Dalit Alpsankyak’ will fetch him not just the bypolls but also victory in the 2027 assembly elections.
Yogi Adityanath is one of the star campaigners for the BJP outside Uttar Pradesh and he will be talking a lot about ‘Batenge toh katenge’ wherever the NDA will be contesting. Akhilesh Yadav, on the other hand, will for the main part, only be campaigning in Uttar Pradesh.
It has still not got into the BJP top brass’ that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is living the reality, is practical to a fault, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is living in denial and is only around because of a bunch of committed Modi-bhakts who gave him 240 Lok Sabha seats.  BJP leaders and social media influencers, who kowtow to the BJP top brass, are scared stiff of relegating Prime Minister Modi to second place in the high-stakes popularity perception battle in the BJP, in which Yogi Adityanath is clearly in the lead. So, when talk meanders to ‘Batenge toh katenge’, a primeval fear grips these cowards.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains Supremo No. 1 in the BJP, but Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reigns supreme among Hindu voters and he has the support of RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat because Bhagwat has read the signs and seen the writing on the wall.
The two had an hour-long one-on-one in Mathura earlier this week and probably Modi too must have come around to accepting that the Yogi is more popular among Hindus than Modi is among Muslims! Hindus vote for the BJP but Muslims have told it to Modi’s face that they wouldn’t vote for him or for the BJP if he stood on his head! In Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is hard to beat.
It wasn’t the Yogi’s fault that Akhilesh Yadav walked off with the kudos in Lok Sabha polls 2024. The setback laid fully at the central leadership’s door. The goal is the assembly elections while the upcoming bypolls will be another opportunity for Akhilesh Yadav to show his political mettle. And with Akhilesh Yadav stampeding the Congress out of Uttar Pradesh, it is a direct one-on-one between the Yogi and the Yadav, both with prime Ministerial aspirations.