Analyzing election results.

Uttar Pradesh or U.P. in short, which literally means ‘Northern Province’, has finally got a new BJP Government with Yogi Adityanath as its Chief Minister. BJP won and all the rest lost including media which had  predicted BJP a distant third. But the results raise a few unanswered questions.

Unanswered questions:

The outgoing Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav did not contest elections at all. Akhilesh was member of upper house U.P. legislature and decided he would continue as such. Result is that now in opposition his party has difficulty finding leader of opposition. But the question is why he chose not to contest as an MLA? Did he know that he could lose as well? After all he got a paltry 44 seats in a house of 403.

Dimple Yadav M.P. and wife of ex CM Akhilesh made her début as campaigner even though hereto before she was known for her fumbling speech in Parliament. What would happen to her career as a motivational speaker? Would she practice more or is she already perfect for public speaking?

The incumbent CM Adityanath though a member of Parliament, also did not contest election for state legislature. Why was he not fielded? Was BJP not sure of its victory? Was it wanted no to give any clue as to who would be the next CM?

There are two Deputy Chief Ministers in the cabinet namely Keshav Prasad Mourya and Dinesh Sharma respectively in the cabinet of Yogi but they also did not contest election. Why ? Mourya is chief of BJP’s U.P. unit and Sharma is Mayor of Lucknow.

Vote share and caste politics:

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which won 312 seats, secured 39.7 per cent vote share in the state. Samajwadi Party, which won 47 seats, only got 21.8 per cent of the total votes cast. The BSP, which won only 19 seats out of total 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, got over 22 per cent of the total votes. The Congress with 7 seats could only manage over six per cent of the vote share. Now it is claimed that U.P. is caste ridden society and votes are cast on the cast lines. 18% Muslims and rest of population in terms of caste, is as under:

Now the biggest question is none of the parties are sure who voted for it in terms of caste. Has caste become irrelevant in U.P. as well? Is it end of caste politics in U.P.? Nobody is sure.

Mother of all gambles.

It appears that this election in U.P. may have given one-sided victory to BJP but until the poll were counted nobody was sure of its victory even though every one was claiming to be victorious. This election was in fact mother of all the gambles. As it happens in all gambles, most aggressive player who takes maximum risk turns out to be winner.

Now do I need to tell you who is the great gambler?