The Milkipur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya has been making headlines after it was excluded from the list of seats going to bypolls in November. The constituency, which was being touted as a prestige battle for the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party after it lost the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat to Samajwadi Party earlier this year, has not been notified for by-election by the ECI.

The election in Milkipur has been deferred due to a pending petition challenging former MLA (now Faizabad MP) Awadhesh Prasad’s election to the Milkipur seat in the UP assembly elections of 2022. Prasad’s BJP competitor Baba Gorakhnath, who lost by a margin of about 14,000 votes, had alleged that the licence of the lawyer who had attested and verified the affidavit of the SP candidate when he was filing his nomination, was invalid. 

In a veiled jibe at the BJP, SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav in a social media post said, “Whoever has avoided the war, consider that he has lost the war.” While speaking to media, he alleged that the BJP feared loss in Milkipur after conducting its internal survey and thus had the bypolls deferred.

Awadhesh Prasad who has not just been the Samajwadi Party's but the INDIA bloc’s star MP, said the petition became “infructuous” when he resigned from the Assembly seat before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and it became vacant.

“After the seat fell vacant and I had resigned, it was his (the BJP member) moral duty to take back his petition,” he told ANI. Baba Gorakhnath, also speaking to ANI, said he intended to withdraw his petition as he wanted bypolls in Ayodhya to take place. However, even after his statement, elections are yet to be announced in Milkipur.

The Bharatiya Janata Party which based its Lok Sabha election campaign on the Ram Mandir narrative, hailing themselves as the “ones who brought Ram to Ayodhya” faced defeat in the very land where Ram Mandir is built. It was not just Ayodhya; the results in all of Uttar Pradesh shocked BJP with the saffron party losing almost half of its previously held seats in the state. The INDIA bloc emerged on top with 43 (SP:37, INC:6) seats as opposed to BJP’s 33.

After the Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took the initiative of overseeing preparations for the anticipated bypolls in Milkipur. He made multiple visits to Ayodhya, where he launched development projects valued at ?1,000 crore, distributed tablets and smartphones, and addressed rallies. Additionally, job fairs were organised, being seen as an attempt to counter the opposition's narrative on unemployment.

Yogi Adityanath intensified election preparations in all ten seats by forming a four-member team including senior cabinet minister Surya Pratap Shahi, a Bhumihar; Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh, a Thakur; Girish Yadav, an OBC; and Satish Chandra Sharma, a Brahmin. The caste equations aimed at consolidating votes of different communities.

While BJP has been showering funds and promises of development and welfare, the Samajwadi Party has also been making headlines but not for the right reasons. 

Ajit Prasad, the son of Samajwadi Party candidate Awadhesh Prasad and SP’s candidate for Milkipur, had an FIR filed against him for alleged assault and kidnapping involving a property dealer Ravi Kumar Tiwari.

According to Tiwari, Ajit Prasad and several others assaulted and kidnapped him near an SBI branch in Faizabad, beat him, and stole ?1 lakh from him while filming the incident and threatening his life.

BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya criticised the SP, stating that the party’s "series of rapes and hooliganism continues". In response, the SP dismissed the allegations as a political attack driven by the BJP's fear of losing. SP spokesperson Pawan Pandey said the FIR is a smaller version of the CBI and ED's misuse against opposition parties, noting the BJP's nervousness about the upcoming elections.

SP also came under fire when a party worker, Moeed Khan, known to be closely associated with Awadhesh Prasad was arrested along with his servant on account of rape of a minor. On July 30, Ayodhya police arrested two accused when the rape came to light after a medical examination revealed that the girl was pregnant.

The Samajwadi party supremo Akhilesh Yadav termed the accusation as a “conspiracy” to politicise the incident. He urged the court to take suo moto cognisance of the case.

In August, an illegal multi-story complex owned by him was demolished by Ayodhya district administration, while in July a bakery owned by him was razed to the ground. The case drew considerable attention, with the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath discussing it in the state assembly.

Despite being the centre of focus of UP bypolls, Milkipur seems unlikely to be included in the elections. Nine out of the 10 vacant seats will go to polls on November 13, with the counting scheduled for November 23.