The Janata has won a significant victory in Fatehpur in UP in the wake of its equally important triumph in Samastipur in Bihar. The two together show fairly clearly that despite the rather poor morale of its top leadership mostly as a result of bitter infighting and the far from impressive performance of the two state governments, the party continues to enjoy considerable support in critically important UP and Bihar. By the same token the two byelection results should help disabuse Mrs. Gandhi of the illusion that she is firmly set on the road to power. For they leave little room for doubt that she has a long way to go before it can be said that she has recovered the lost ground and indeed, that she may not be able to make it unless she is assisted by a reasonably well organised apparatus which maybe beyond her without the reunification of the two Congress parties.
In a way the Janata’s victory and the Congress (l)’s defeat in Fatehpur are more significant than in Samastipur. For while Samastipur was the Bihar chief minister, Mr. Karpoori Thakur’s constituency and he had nursed it carefully, no equally important Janata leader has been active in Fatehpur and nothing like a party organization exists there. The Janata candidates in both cases were not well known political workers. But at least Prof. Ajit Kumar Mehta had not like Mr. Liaqat Hussain lost a municipal election earlier. Since the Congress (I) had in both cases fielded well known candidates – Mrs. Tarakeshwari Sinha is a former union minister of state and Mr. Prem Dutt Tiwari a former MLA – and the caste and communal arithmetic was in no way intrinsically adverse from its point of view, the defeats must be pretty galling for it.
Local factors have evident played a big role in determining the outcome of these keenly contested by-elections. In the case of Fatehpur it appears that despite the riots in Aligarh, the Congress (I) failed to win over a substantial portion of the Muslim vote because the Janata nominee happened to be Muslim, that as usual a sizable section of the Brahmins did not turn up at the polling booths though the Congress (I) candidate was a fellow Brahmin, and that a majority of the Thakurs have sided with the Janata. But since victory there would have been credited to Mrs. Gandhi defeat must lead to the inference that her charisma has not worked or has worked only to a limited extent. She spent as many as four days in the constituency and addressed fairly large gatherings.
Thus apparently many of those who came to see her and listened to what she had to say have not voted for her candidate. Instead they seem to have chosen to vote along caste lines. This is unfortunate. But in a peculiar way the caste factor slows down the growth of mass politics and the rise of an authoritarian leader. Be that as it may, it cannot be disputed that Azamgarh – the Congress (I) candidate Mrs. Molisina Kidwai annexed that constituency with a comfortable majority last summer – was not the trend-setter it was said to be for north India. This should have been clear even then. But it was not to a number of people. The two by-elections settle the issue for the time being.