In BJP’s Ayodhya loss, a grouse: ‘Temple for outsiders… BJP forgot to work for us’

Around a kilometre from the Government Inter College in Ayodhya, which serves as the counting centre for the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, Laxmikant Tiwari sits in the near deserted BJP election office in Ayodhya, surrounded by a few others with long faces. Minutes ago, the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate, Lallu Singh, had accepted defeat to Awadesh Prasad of the Samajwadi Party.

“We worked really hard, we fought for this, but Ram Mandir consecration did not convert into votes,” says Tiwari, the BJP’s counting agent for the seat.

Barely four months after the consecration of the Ram temple – among the BJP’s key ideological projects and one of its biggest calling cards this election – the party lost the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat of which Ayodhya is a part. Even for an election that defied all exit polls predictions and saw the BJP falling well short of its own goal of 370 seats, the loss in Ayodhya was particularly stark.

“There were local issues that took centre stage. Many villages in Ayodhya were angry with the land acquisition that was happening around the temple and the airport. Also, the BSP votes were transferred to the SP because Awadesh Prasad is a Dalit leader,” says Tiwari.

Awadhesh Prasad, a nine-time MLA who is among the key Dalit faces of the SP, defeated Lallu Singh, who was seeking to be re-elected for the third time, by a margin of 54,567 votes.

Prasad told The Indian Express after his win, “This is a historic victory because our national president, Akhilesh Yadav, fielded me from a general seat…People have supported me regardless of caste and community.”

In the extraordinary defeat of the BJP are echoes of unemployment, inflation, land acquisition and talk of “changes in the Constitution”.

In the run-up to the elections,