The unexpected haul of seats for the Samajwadi Party in the Uttar Pradesh bypolls is being widely projected as a rejection of the BJP’s politics of communal polarisation and a revival of the caste-based politics of regional forces. “The communal forces have been defeated,” thundered CM Akhilesh Yadav after the results. A month ago, in the wake of the results of the Bihar bypolls too one had witnessed a similar euphoria in the ranks of the ‘secular’ parties. JD(U) leader K.C. Tyagi had told a TV news anchor on result day that “a national alliance of secular parties was in the offing”. The results of the 50-odd assembly bypoll seats since the Lok Sabha elections have so acted as a shot in the arm that talks about a Congress-SP-RLD seat-sharing arrangement for the 2017 UP assembly polls are already in the air.
But there are several moot questions that beg an answer: can these results be seen as a significant decline in the mass appeal of Narendra Modi and an endorsement of discredited...
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