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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said over-confidence and inability to understand the understanding between SP and BSP were the prime reasons for the BJP's shocking loss The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received a severe setback in the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar Lok Sabha and Assembly by-elections, losing four of the five seats in the bypolls, including the all-important Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats in Uttar Pradesh. Especially worrisome for the BJP was the fact that it was trounced by the BSP-backed Samajwadi Party in the high-stakes Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls which could boost the chances of a 'mahagathbandhan' of anti-BJP parties before the 2019 general elections. After sweeping the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections last year, the BJP faced a last-minute alliance stitched by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the bypolls. BSP supremo Mayawati had announced her party's backing for S...

Walking out of the shadow of his father and uncle and with the support of Congress and Nitish Kumar, Akhilesh Yadav could be bad news for the BJP The split in the   Samajwadi Party   (SP), which increasingly looks imminent, is bad news for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), not just for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls but also for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. With the Congress weakened, the BJP effort has been to dent the support base as well as credibility of regional political parties that have the potential to form the nucleus of a strong third front in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. These parties are Uttar Pradesh-based SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP); Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha; the Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu; the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad   Akhilesh Yadav   combine in Bihar, Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in Bengal and the Left parties. The states where these parties wield influence – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Benga...