New Delhi: With the Election Commission announcing the bypoll date for the Milkipur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya district, the BJP now has a chance to redeem itself after losing the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, where the Ram temple is located, last year.

The Milkipur bypoll will be held on 5 February and the results will be out on 8 February. The bypoll was to be held in November last year along with nine other assembly seats, but was deferred because of a pending court case.

BJP leader and then sitting MP Lallu Singh lost to Prasad by 54,567 votes, just months after the Ram Mandir—one of the party’s central poll planks—was built.

Both the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BJP have been geared up for this crucial contest since before the bypoll was announced. While SP has named Awadhesh Prasad’s son, Ajit Prasad, as its candidate, the BJP has yet to announce its candidate.

The BJP is confident about its victory in Milkipur after winning seven out of the nine assembly seats in the November bypolls and with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath supervising the party’s preparations for the seat.

Speaking to ThePrint, UP BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary said, “We are fully confident for Milkipur now, as the last bypolls went in our favour.”

He added, “During Lok Sabha polls, the Opposition spread a fake narrative of ‘Samvidhan Bachao’ (save the Constitution) and a large chunk of Dalit votes shifted towards them, but now the situation has changed. Voters of Ayodhya are also releasing their mistakes. On the other hand, we have our preparation on the booth level.”

However, SP functionaries disagreed, adding that the caste dynamics of the Milkipur assembly seat are in the party’s favour. Dalit, Yadav and Muslim votes comprise almost 50 percent of the votes.

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CM Yogi, the command in-chief in Milkipur

Functionaries from the UP BJP said Yogi visited Milkipur more than two dozen times in the last six months. Before the November bypolls, he took up the responsibility of overseeing the preparations of the Milkipur assembly seat while assigning the task of monitoring the other seats to his cabinet ministers.

In his visit to Ayodhya on 4 January, Yogi, while addressing party workers at Acharya Narendra Dev Agriculture University, said, “If the Bharatiya Janata Party could win the Kundarki assembly seat in the bypolls, the party can also wrest the Milkipur seat. Despite 65 percent Muslim population in Kundarki, the BJP won the by-election with record votes because of development.”

He said that the state government has also turned Ayodhya into “a symbol of development”.

“We consider Ram and Sanatan as symbols of development. The Samajwadi Party considers Babur as an ideal,” he said.

According to a senior UP BJP leader who attended Yogi’s meetings in Ayodhya, “Maharaj ji does not want to leave any chance this time. He is himself meeting not only district functionaries but booth-level workers too. Other than Gorakhpur, where have you seen him meeting booth-level karyakartas?”

“Though Kundarki’s victory has given a boost, Ayodhya’s bypoll is more important to create a narrative for 2027 polls. We are fed-up with opposition workers’ comments that ‘jahan mandir banwaya, wahin haar gye’ (you lost where you built the Ram temple),” he added.

An official from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) said the bypoll was also crucial for the chief minister.

A functionary told ThePrint, “Almost every week he takes feedback about Milkipur. He also talked to the party’s old workers who were inactive there. He does not want to leave any chance this time as the caste dynamics of this seat are not too suitable for the BJP. After Kundarki and Katehari, now his target is Milkipur.”

In the November bypolls, the SP retained Sishamau and Karhal, but lost Kundarki and Katehari to the BJP. Ghaziabad, Khair, Majhawan and Phulpur were also won by BJP while its ally the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) retained Meerapur.

The BJP won Kundarki constituency for the first time after 1993, while, in Katehari, it was able to defeat SP stalwart Lalji Verma, who had held the seat since 2017.

Yogi to lead celebrations at Ram Temple

In that light, the CM’s presence in Ayodhya on the first anniversary of the pran pratishtha (consecration) ceremony of the Ram Lalla idol gains fresh importance. On 11 January, leading the celebrations, CM Yogi will perform a traditional ceremony in the sanctum sanctorum of the Ram temple. He is also scheduled to hold a public address from Angad Tila, adjacent to the temple, in the afternoon.

Senior functionaries of UP BJP said his presence will send a message to Ayodhya voters. Though Milkipur constituency is almost 25 km from Ayodhya, BJP workers have been invited to attend the CM’s public address. The party cadre in Ayodhya is seeing it as a start to the Milkipur bypoll campaign.

However, MP Awadesh Prasad was confident that the Samajwadi Party would win the seat.

He said, “The narrative is still in our favour. I have won that seat multiple times. I have a personal connect with people in Milkipur. Though BJP is trying to spread hate in Ayodhya, SP will sail through easily.”

“We also have Prabhu (Lord) Ram’s blessings,” he added.

According to Shilp Shikha Singh, a UP-based political analyst and assistant professor at Lucknow’s Giri Institute of Development Studies, “Milkipur’s caste dynamics make the bypoll interesting. BJP is confident due to their records of winning by-polls but SP’s chances are also no less. In fact, it is going to be a neck-to-neck election. Now, non-Yadav Other Backward Class (OBC) votes would be a game-changer.”

(Edited by Sanya Mathur)

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