With two special election wins in Uttar Pradesh, India's opposition parties may be working out a blueprint to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Modi's party, in fact, lost three special elections for vacated seats in the lower house of Parliament on March 14. But the real significance of the losses lies in how they can shape India's opposition, which thus far has failed to unite to pose a serious challenge to Modi. The losses also underscore the importance of Modi as the BJP's star campaigner — and therefore show the limits of the BJP on the state level without him.
Notably, two of the BJP losses came in Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous and electorally significant state, where the party swept to power last year. During those state elections, Yogi Adityanath become chief minister of the state. Upon his promotion, he vacated his seat in Gorakhpur, a district he had represented in the lower house since 1998 (the party has held the seat since 1991). But on March 14, the Samajwadi Party took the seat after forming a tactical alliance with its rival, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). A similar story unfolded in Phulpur, the district vacated last year by Keshav Prasad Maurya, the No. 2 state official under Adityanath.
Meanwhile, in Bihar, India's third most populous state, where the BJP formed an alliance last year with the Janata Dal (United), the party lost the special election to the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal, which retained its seat in Araria district. The losses bring the BJP tally in the lower house of Parliament down from the 282 seats it commanded upon sweeping to power during the 2014 elections to 274 seats.
To be sure, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance still has a comfortable majority. But the losses are providing inspiration to India's opposition. Already, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has said he wants to form an alliance with the BSP to challenge the BJP during the 2019 national elections.
Internal tension within the BJP may have also played a part in the elections. While it's unclear why Modi didn't campaign for his party in the Uttar Pradesh elections — a significant factor contributing to the losses — there is speculation that he wanted to cut an independent-minded Adityanath, who has had a tense relationship with the state-level party leadership as well, down to size.
Going forward, Adityanath will try to recover from the Uttar Pradesh losses, and Modi will focus on winning the upcoming state elections in Karnataka, the largest state still controlled by the opposition Indian National Congress party. Those elections are important because state legislatures send representatives to the upper house of Parliament, where the BJP has minority status, which complicates its efforts to pass laws aimed at reforming the third largest economy in Asia. And both Modi and Adityanath will have to fend off opposition parties that are trying to unite to challenge the BJP.
