The upcoming bypolls in the nine seats of Uttar Pradesh (UP) will not alter the state’s government or significantly shift the assembly’s composition. Yet, the anticipation and media buzz surrounding the election reaffirms a popular political adage: the road to Delhi, indeed, runs through UP. 

The 2024 Lok Sabha election mandate shook UP, a state that had been swept by a saffron wave post-2014. The upcoming bypolls now serve as a litmus test for the mood of the state. They will determine whether the INDIA bloc’s success was a stroke of luck, or if the days of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh are truly numbered. 

Of the nine seats going to polls, eight of them became vacant during the recently-concluded Lok Sabha election when the sitting MLAs resigned to contest in the parliamentary election. The Sisamau seat in Kanpur, however, was a different story. 

In June, the sitting MLA of Sisamau, Irfan Solanki, was handed a seven year prison sentence by the Allahabad High Court in relation to a 2022 arson case. He, along with three others, including his younger brother, was found guilty in connection to an incident reported on November 8, 2022. The complaint, filed by Nazir Fatima, a widow, accused the Solanki brothers of starting a fire as part of a scheme to forcibly take her property. Although serving the punishment, Solanki has on multiple occasions claimed he’s been implicated for crimes he didn’t commit. 

The Sisamau seat has long been an impenetrable fortress for parties other than Samajwadi Party (SP), with Solanki securing victories in the constituency three times―in 2012, 2017 and 2022. Now, as the seat has fallen vacant and Solanki is out of the picture, his wife, Naseem Solanki, has stepped up to the challenge. She describes her mission as one to ‘prove my (her) husband’s innocence’, as she seeks to continue the family’s hold in the region. 

“I had never thought that one day I would be entering politics,” says 44-year-old Naseem, as she adjusts the loose end of her dupatta over her head. “Vidhayak ji (Irfan Solanki) always kept me and our children away from politics, so I never thought this would happen,” she says. 

Naseem says her entry into politics was premised upon the turbulent period at home following her husband’s arrest in December 2022. Initially held in Kanpur Jail, he was later transferred to Maharajganj, roughly 400 km away, due to ‘administrative reasons’. Every few days, she travels over nine hours to Maharajganj with her three young children, just to see her husband for a few minutes through a small window.

“We have been really mentally disturbed facing all this for two years. We didn’t expect him to be handed the seven year imprisonment, but when it happened, it broke us. And then our children’s studies got affected, Vidhayak ji’s health deteriorated and things were just not right. But that is what gave me the strength to rebuild everything that we had lost,” she says. 

The SP candidate, who began her campaigning only a few days ago, says she has received overwhelming love, support and respect from the people she met on the ground—hinting at the sympathy votes in her favour due to the ‘Irfan Solanki factor’. 

However, just days into her campaign, she faced a setback when both the Muslim and Hindu communities came down heavily on her for visiting a local temple on Diwali. While the Muslim cleric issued a fatwa against her, the Hindu priests washed the temple with gangajal after her visit. 

The Sisamau seat is one of the top priority seats for the BJP this time, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath himself spearheading the campaign. In August, Adityanath visited Kanpur where an employment and loan mela was organised and smart phones and tablets were distributed among the youth. Additionally, several welfare schemes and development projects worth hundreds of crores of rupees were launched in the city. 

While speaking at a rally in Kanpur, Adityanath said: “Samajwadi Party ki topi laal, lekin kaarname kaale hain (SP leaders wear red caps, but commit evil deeds).” He alleged that it was because of their deeds that the people of Sisamau were facing a by-election. 

Initially, there was speculation that the BJP would field a Dalit leader, Rakesh Sonkar, for the Sisamau seat, but the party ultimately chose to go with a Brahmin candidate, Suresh Awasthi. Awasthi is no stranger to electoral battles―he has contested two assembly elections, one from Arya Nagar and another from Sisamau, but lost both by a few thousand votes. 

The Sisamau seat is dominated by Muslims, with a population of roughly 110,000 eligible voters, followed by Brahmins, at around 70,000, and, Dalits at 60,000. In the 2022 assembly elections, Solanki received a total of 79,163 votes, followed by the BJP’s Salil Vishnoi at 66,897. While the Muslims have traditionally favoured Solanki, Brahmins have voted for the BJP. The Dalit vote is divided. 

In a constituency where every vote counts, a call for an election boycott by the residents of a Dalit basti in Dwarkapuri could have a significant impact. Around 500 families―roughly 3,000 to 3,500 eligible voters—from Kanpur’s Dwarkapuri basti called for the boycott after their repeated demands for property ownership rights were ignored. 

“Bahishkar, bahishkar, bahishkar (boycott, boycott, boycott),” says Baba Chhotelal Valmiki, a resident of Dwarkapuri basti, waving the documents he’d been carrying around in a tattered green folder bent at the edges. He quickly shuffles through the papers with a sense of urgency and shows the letters he wrote to the local authorities and to the chief minister to draw attention to their ordeal. 

“We’ve voted for many parties in previous elections, and they promised to do something about helping us register our properties in our names. But when we voted them to power, they never looked back at us. So why should we vote for them? Why should we support them?” says Valmiki. 

The Dwarkapuri community, he says, was promised property ownership rights way back in 1982, However, more than four decades later, the residents are still waiting for the fulfilment of that promise. 

The residents have printed banners declaring their decision to boycott the upcoming polls, placing them at the entrance of their narrow lanes. Politicians who have attempted to visit the locality for campaigning have been turned away. The residents are clear: they demand concrete action, not just verbal reassurances, and only after that, they will consider participating in the elections. 

Another resident, Sushil Kumar, says that not having the property in their names creates a constant atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. He says they often receive threats from the land mafia, warning that their homes will be bulldozed and demolished to make way for newer developments. 

“The government took over this area and declared it as a malin basti (slum). The previous owners of this land still send notices to people asking for rent that they say is overdue. If they think they haven’t been paid fairly for their land, they should ask the government for compensation, and not the people living here,” says Kumar. 

“About 95 per cent of the population here is from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community, and everyone knows how weak the SC community is, so no one pays any attention to our grievances. We will stand with whoever takes up out cause, whichever party that may be,” he adds. 

The other bypolls in UP include Katehari, Phulpur, Meerapur, Karhal, Kundarki, Ghaziabad, Khair and Majhawan. Of these, three were held by the SP, three by the BJP, one by the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and one by the NISHAD Party. The INDIA Bloc―represented solely by the SP after seat-sharing talks with the Congress fell through―will aim to replicate its success of the Lok Sabha elections. Meanwhile, the BJP and its allies view these bypolls as a prestige battle, hoping to redeem themselves and maintain their influence in the state.