The political dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which appeared almost unassailable after 2014, is beginning to show cracks. The 2024 general election was an important setback: the party lost its parliamentary majority and had to depend on its allies to form the government. Since then, disillusionment has acquired greater political salience through youth protests, rising prices, unemployment and failures of governance, particularly irregularities in the education and examination systems. To these can be added the defeat of the Constitutional Amendment Bill on delimitation and women’s reservation in April, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests that led to the resignation of the then Union Education Minister and the complete washout of the monsoon session of Parliament, as both the Prime Minister and Home Minister stayed away. Questions over accountability for the excessive police action against student protesters on July 20, compounded by the absence of the two leaders from Parliament, reinforced the impression of a government unwilling to answer for its actions.
But these setbacks do not by themselves amount to an erosion of hegemony. The BJP remains a formidable political force, retaining a substantial electoral base and considerable ideological appeal. What is now at issue is whether the forces that produced the BJP’s dominance are beginning to encounter limits. Uttar Pradesh is where this can be most clearly tested.
The citadel of the party’s power, 2024 result
U.P. is not merely India’s most populous State; it is the citadel of BJP power, central to the party’s rise to national prominence. In the 2014 general election, the BJP won 71 of the State’s 80 seats, establishing it as a crucial pillar of its national power. In the 2019 general election, it won 62 seats on its own despite the formidable alliance of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party. The State’s electoral weight was thus instrumental to its successive parliamentary majorities at the Centre. U.P. is still the crucible of the BJP’s majoritarian politics and its Hindu-Muslim mobilisation. A weakening of the BJP here would therefore have implications far beyond the State.
The 2024 general election strongly indicates that the BJP had lost ground in U.P. Its tally fell from 62 seats in 2019 to 33, while the SP won 37 and the Congress six. The sharpest erosion occurred in Awadh, once the heartland of the Ayodhya temple movement. In 2022, the BJP won 101 of Awadh’s 154 Assembly seats. In 2024, it was leading in only 51 of those Assembly segments — 50 fewer than the number it had won in 2022.
The timing made the 2024 general election result extremely significant. It followed the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, which was the culmination of a political and cultural project that had animated the BJP and the wider Hindu right for decades. Yet, the inauguration did not produce the electoral impact that might have been expected: most strikingly, the BJP lost the Faizabad seat, which includes Ayodhya itself. It also lost in many constituencies around it. This does not mean that Ayodhya or the majoritarian politics surrounding it has ceased to matter. The consequential point is that it was no longer enough to win elections even in the movement’s heartland. The fact that the erosion was most visible in this region adds to its significance, given the subsequent controversy over donations to the temple. The episode, whose effects are still being felt across the State, showed that even powerful ideological symbols are not beyond questions of integrity.
This matters because the BJP’s political hold in U.P. has rested on a combination of communal mobilisation, a durable electoral base and social coalitions built around the temple campaign. The 2024 general election showed that this alignment could be disrupted. Its longer-term implications will depend on whether that disruption proves temporary or marks a lasting shift in the electorate’s preferences and expectations.
Some of the prominent fault lines
The 2024 result also suggests that voters are becoming less willing to let a single dimension of politics overwhelm all others, especially when claims of economic performance do not match the realities on the ground. U.P. remains among the poorer-performing economies of the north and east — as it has for decades. Its economy has grown, but growth has not fundamentally altered its relative economic position or generated enough productive employment. The gap between the rhetoric of transformation and economic experience on the ground is particularly visible in the State’s industrial clusters. In Kanpur, Firozabad, Bhadohi and Moradabad, exporters have faced serious disruption from the tariff regime of the United States, and the duties raised on Indian goods, with falling orders, shrinking market access and risks to employment, principally among temporary and contract workers.
The frustration among young voters is strikingly evident in the precarity of employment and recruitment. Many were actively involved in the anti-National Eligibility cum Entrance Test protests earlier in the year. U.P. has seen repeated examination leaks and cancellations. In 2024, the police constable examination, taken by around 48 lakh candidates for 60,244 posts, was cancelled following a paper leak. The Review Officer/Assistant Review Officer examination was similarly cancelled amid allegations of irregularities, where out of a total of 10.76 lakh registered candidates, about 6.8 lakh candidates appeared, competing for just 411 posts. For a generation that invests years in its preparation for scarce government jobs, such failures are not merely administrative lapses. They can mean the loss of money spent on coaching and applications, income and opportunity in a State where government employment remains a highly valued path to economic security.
The battle lines are being drawn
In these circumstances, the 2027 U.P. election is likely to be more closely contested than those that the BJP has faced in the State in recent years. The party remains the strongest contender, but the 2024 result has opened space for the Opposition and revealed strains at various levels that were barely perceptible in earlier elections. The government is working overtime to address the gap on several fronts, reflected in a slew of measures to promote local entrepreneurship and provide stipends for students in corporate and technical institutions.
It is also set to introduce new schemes for women, such as the Mahila Udyami Credit Yojana, under which around one crore women associated with self-help groups are expected to receive interest-free credit of up to ₹1 lakh in stages. The Opposition, too, sees an opening. Both the SP and the Congress are seeking to strengthen their appeal among younger voters, with their leaders, Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi, focusing on student unrest, unemployment and widening caste fault lines, particularly divisions among upper castes and between them and the Other Backward Classes. Convergence between the two parties, as in 2024, could bolster the Opposition’s chances in the 2027 U.P. election.
The 2027 election will therefore reveal more than the BJP’s ability to recover lost seats. It will show whether the political template that carried the party to power from Lucknow to New Delhi still commands the same electoral force. The 2024 result has already shown that this template is no longer invulnerable in U.P. The 2027 election will determine whether the shift revealed in 2024 becomes more durable. What happens in U.P. could therefore alter the political balance on which the BJP’s national dominance has rested.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Published – September 18, 2026 12:16 am IST
