At 10:30 AM, it is only the initial trends that have trickled in, however, according to the Election Commission website and media channels at large, Yogi Adityanath is set to come back as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh with a substantial majority. At the time of writing this article, news channels predicted BJP inching towards 300 seats in UP and the Election Commission gave BJP a lead in about 200 seats.
As the trends trickled in, rent-a-cause activists on propaganda channels started having a meltdown already.
Yogendra Yadav was a panellist on NDTV, analysing the election results along with Prannoy Roy and other rent-a-cause activists. Prannoy Roy declared that there was no question now that BJP was winning the state even as Akhilesh Yadav’s party, SP, was clinging on to hope.
While the discussion was on, Yogendra Yadav resigned to fate and made a strange comment, giving us a window into the chaos that must be erupting in his head with Yogi set to come back as the CM.
Reportedly, Yogendra Yadav on NDTV said that “The result of a support for dismantling of the republic with the support of the public”. Essentially, saying that the results prove that the people are helping PM Modi, CM Yogi and BJP to dismantle the “republic” which is India.
The first rule of political, and especially electoral analysis, is to not blame the voters. However, Yogendra Yadav’s frustration seems to have driven him to do exactly that. He blamed the people for voting the way they did, alleging that the voters were against India itself by voting for Yogi Adityanath.
It is not just Yogendra Yadav, globally, there has been a propaganda war unleashed to peddle this very line of argument.
In its most recent Democracy assessment, the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute ranked India in the top ten autocratic countries in the world. Continuing with baseless anti-India propaganda by western organisations, they have also stated that the country’s democratic orientation will deteriorate.
According to the Swedish Institute’s research, India is in the bottom 40% to 50% of countries on V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index (LDI). According to the research, 15 nations are seeing a fresh wave of democratization, while 32 countries are experiencing autocracy. Last year, the institute classified India as an “electoral autocracy.” It is pertinent to note that V-Dem is funded by George Soros who had vowed a fund to bring down several global leaders including PM Narendra Modi for being “Nationalist”.