ABSTRACT
The 16th Lok Sabha (LS) election results were significant for two reasons: first, it gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a massive mandate and clear majority to govern the country for the first time, as the party won 272 out of 543 seats that went to polls; and second, it registered a massive win in Uttar Pradesh (UP), winning 71 out of 80 seats. Both wins were the first of its kind; never had BJP won a clear majority at the centre nor ever won in UP on such a gigantic scale. UP contributed over 26 per cent seats to BJP’s national kitty (71/272). Obviously, other parties performed very poorly in UP. The only parties to win seats were Samajwadi Party (SP), which won five seats of Azamgarh, Kannauj, Ferozabad, Mainpuri and Badaun (all went to members of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family), and Congress that managed to retain only Rae Bareilly and Amethi, represented by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, respectively. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) drew a blank. The detailed results for UP are shown in Table 6.1.
