The Road to 2019

It was one of those rare days when opposition parties in the country were elated and their supporters celebrating. The reason was that in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Samajwadi Party–Bahujan Samaj Party (SP–BSP) alliance had managed to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls. While the Gorakhpur seat was earlier held by Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of UP, the Phulpur seat was vacated by the deputy chief minister, Keshav Prasad Maurya.

Both the seats are now with the SP, which had fielded Pravin Nishad in Gorakhpur and Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel in Phulpur. Although this victory has come in a by-election, the celebrations of the victors seem higher in decibel than the magnitude of the victory itself, with many in the opposition camps viewing the success of non-BJP candidates as a trailer to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.