2004 Indian general election in Uttar Pradesh

The 2004 Indian general election in Uttar Pradesh were held between 26 April and 10 May 2004 for the 14th Lok Sabha. The election results were declared on 13 May in which the national parties the BJP and the Congress performed quite badly while the state parties, SP and BSP did very well and fetched majority of the seats. Early polls called by the BJP proved disastrous for the party, although Congress managed to win and form the government at the national level.

The election commission had appointed its total of 240 observers in the state in view of the preparations.^[2]

The filing of nomination along with voting was carried by the Election Commission in three days as:^[3]

Further the affidavits were filed by the contesting candidates from each seat respectively which were submitted to the Election Commission as mandated.^[4]

The BJP in its party manifesto included building Lord Ram temple in Ayodhya as a part of ‘Vision Document’.^[5] The party had hoped that section of the public would believe there is no alternate to PM Vajpayee with the slogan: Kaho dil se, Atal phir se and would ultimately help in certain seats.^[6]

The table shows seat allotments alliance and party wise:^[7]

The BSP had contested all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.^[9]

The total voting percentage was recorded at 48.16 for all the three phases with 11,06,24,490 electorate casting their votes.^[10] 63 seats were reserved for the general caste while remaining 17 for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.^[11][12]

The biggest gainer in the election was the Samajwadi Party which alone won 35 seats^[13] and its alliance partner RLD won 3 seats in western Uttar Pradesh. The SP alliance won almost half the seats from the state.^[14] SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav won from Mainpuri by a huge difference.^[15]

Perhaps the biggest loser was the BJP which was reduced to just 10 seats from previous 25 seats in 1999 general election from the state even though Vajpayee won comfortably from Lucknow.^[8] Important state party leaders Maneka Gandhi and Yogi Adityanath were elected from Pilibhit and Gorakhpur respectively. The party’s India Shining campaign backfired badly for the party and they lost a substantial number of seats.^[5]

Another national party Congress did not gained in the state and was limited to just 9 seats although their national party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi won from Raebareli and Amethi.^[15][13]

The BSP registered its victory in 19 seats.

The detailed results per seat wise based on winning candidates is mentioned in table below:^[17]

The result showed that both the national parties, BJP and the Congress were rejected by the state voters with the opinion poll proved equally wrong.^[18] The state electorate seems to have upright rejected ‘’India shining’’ slogan coined by the BJP owing to its dismal performance. The party downward slide continued in numbers way lower than what when it had registered the victory in more than 50 seats in the state in subsequent 1991, 1996 and 1998 elections.^[19] The decision for calling snap polls by the Vajpayee govt proved very costly for the party. The tally in the state was the lowest since 1989 election.^[20] Notable state BJP leaders including union ministers Murli Manohar Joshi and Swami Chinmayanand, state assembly speaker Keshari Nath Tripathi and Uttar Pradesh party unit chief Vinay Katiyar were all defeated. The Ram temple issue also did not help as its party candidate Laloo Singh was defeated at Faizabad by BSP’s Mitrasen Yadav. The party failed to win even a single seat in Kashi (Varanasi) region which had 13 Lok Sabha seats. Another BJP prominent leader and ex-CM Kalyan Singh was able to win from Bulandshahr by a small margin of around 6500 votes but the party lost Aligarh, Singh’s hometown to the Congress.

In spite of campaigning by Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party was restricted to only 9 seats. The Congress lost Rampur, Meerut, Pratapgarh and Muzaffarnagar, but for the first time in a decade made victories in Poorvanchal (eastern) region by capturing Varanasi and Bansgaon seats.

The regional party, SP did quite well in the state, particularly in the eastern region and winning seats in the Bundelkhand region where it previously went blank in 1999 election. The alliance with the RLD proved fruitful in the western UP where Muslim-Jat-Yadav combined voted for the SP-RLD alliance.

Apart from it BSP also performed well with consolidation of dalit votes resulting in winning 19 seats from 14 before even in absence of party leader Kanshi Ram and Mayawati taking the charge thereof. Party strategy of fielding a large number of Muslims and upper caste candidates proved to be beneficial for the party.^[8] Although the party had lost election deposit in 11 contesting seats.^[9]

It was also determined by ‘Centre for the Study of Developing Societies’ that the majority of the people did not voted keeping in mind the negative statements about their leader or parties to whom they are supporting.^[21]

• Election Commission of India
• State Election Commission Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow