Elephantasia
I don’t understand what the fuss is all about.. Who lost, who won, why did a party lose, why did the other win the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh… The reason is pretty simple in my opinion!
If you remember, the Election Commission had ordered the, then, UP Government to cover all statues of Elephants in the State… This was done on the 7th of January! this is exactly where the downfall started!
I think the secret of wins in UP are all hidden in the respective party’s election symbols, for example!
Bahujan Samaj Party, or BSP had its symbol covered… Now no one knew suddenly forgot that the elephant was BSP’s symbol! After all covering all these statues meant that there presence would not impact the voters! We were expected to forget the Elephant = BSP = Behen Mayawati! Whatever seats that BSP managed to get were probably because of the wild elephants in the Rajaji National Park, and Jim Corbett, which could not be covered with plastic sheets. And some which have been domesticated, and again could not be covered!
Congress, by this logic should have won a lot as the summers were arriving, and there are not many people who cover their palms in this weather… also Congress kids have been shaking too many hands all around in UP… Now what went wrong for them, was the fact that while they were happily shaking hands with people in UP, the symbol of Congress, the Palm, seems more like a slap on the common man’s face!
BJP, got a few seats here and there, because of their symbol being visible in the village ponds, and a handful of high profile resorts all around in the state…
Now the big one… Samajwadi Party… They won, simply because no one (read Election Commission) bothered to asked the state government to ban the use of cycles till the elections were over! And with the fuel prices increasing almost every two months, more and more people are taking on cycles.. more cycles, more support for SP… every time a faithful BJP or a Congress or a BSP worker would use a cycle the vote bank shifted to SP’s favor… and it kept happening till SP won the elections by a huge margin!!!