UP’s 2022 Polls Saw Yogi’s Return & Akhilesh Chastised, Cong Decimated & Defectors Exiled

The historic re-election of an incumbent government in Uttar Pradesh after a gap of 37 years made Prime Minister Narendra Modi issue an appeal to intellectuals to stop analyzing it from the prism of caste or class. Please do not look for motives of castes/class in the way people vote, he urged. Things have changed in Uttar Pradesh, in his Varanasi — in his Lok Sabha constituency for two terms that he has represented. People are voting on deliverables. The spectacular re-election of Yogi with 255 BJP MLAs has an interesting backstory — some of its key ministers, in fact as many 11 of them had to bite dust. Yes, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya narrowly lost to Pallavi Patel of Samajwadi Party, sister of Apna Dal leader Anupriya Patel from Sirathu. Apna Dal is an NDA ally. So did sugarcane minister Suresh Rana to Rashtriya Lok Dal in Shamli. As for Akhilesh Yadav, he finally came to terms with poll results and accepted he may not have won but improved his tally from 47 in 2017 to 111. He could not bail out defectors. Two BJP ministers who joined him like Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini were humbled. Only Dara Singh Chauhan managed to win.