The Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency, situated in Uttar Pradesh, is one of the 80 parliamentary constituencies in the state. Classified under the General category, it encompasses parts of Barabanki and Faizabad districts. Currently, Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency comprises five Legislative Assembly segments — Dariyabad in Barabanki district, Rudauli, Milkipur (SC), Bikapur, and Ayodhya in Faizabad district. The famous twin cities of Ayodhya and Faizabad lie in this constituency. The constituency will vote in the fifth phase on May 20.
Current MP: Lallu Singh of BJP since 2014, preceded since Nirmal Khatri of Congress (2009)
Candidates: Awadhesh Prasad (SP), Lallu Singh (BJP), Sacchidanand Pandey (BSP)
POLITICAL DYNAMICS
BJP in Pole Position: The BJP has fielded sitting MP Lallu Singh for a third term from the Faizabad Lok Sabha Constituency with the Ram Mandir as its central electoral platform. But the BJP has made it clear that it is not just Singh who is on the ballot, but more so, it is Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi themselves on the ballot. Seeking votes in the names of these two leaders, coupled with the Ram Mandir and the phenomenal transformation of Ayodhya, has placed the party in a pole position.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha Election, Lallu Singh, a five-time MLA from Ayodhya, won the Lok Sabha seat with a massive margin of 2.82 lakh votes. In 2019, this lead shrunk to a little over 65,000 votes, which came as a concern to the party.
However, the situation in 2019 was significantly different from what it is now. Firstly, the Ram Mandir land dispute case was still in court and patience was running thin among the constituents. Second, Singh faced anti-incumbency. And third, and most importantly, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party were in alliance, consolidating 43% of the vote, against the BJP’s 49.1%.
One major concern for the party emerged during the construction process amid Ayodhya’s facelift as several homes and shops in encroached land were demolished. While the government offered compensation, residents claimed that it was not enough, and it also disregarded those who lived in rented homes or ran their business out of rented shops. Since then, the government has attempted to diffuse this issue. In 2023, it let out a sigh of relief when it retained the mayoral seat in Ayodhya, with the party’s Girish Pati Tripathi defeating the SP by almost 36,000 votes.
In the 2022 assembly elections, the Yogi government was re-elected to power in the state and in the Faizabad parliamentary seat, it bagged four seats including Dariyabad, Rudauli, Bikapur and Ayodhya while the SP bagged the SC-reserved Milkipur. The BJP led with over 85,000 votes and a vote share of 45.1% against the SP’s 37.9%, BSP’s 11.3% and Congress’ 1.3%. In the absence of a BSP-SP alliance, the BJP is confident that in pursuit of Dalit votes, the BSP will do more damage to the INDIA Bloc candidate than the saffron party.
Five years since 2019, the conditions are starkly different as the newly built Ram Mandir and Ayodhya’s infrastructural facelift stand testaments to the political transformation of Ayodhya. Anti-incumbency is no longer a key concern of the party, and the SP and BSP are not in an alliance. Hence, this election is set to be a pivotal one, as it marks a new era in Ayodhya’s political history with the BJP expected to register a landslide victory.
A Sense of ‘Ram Rajya’: A key factor at play here is that CM Yogi Adityanath has been visiting the constituency every three-four weeks. Observers on the ground find that he has been accessible to the people, listening to their grievances and offering solutions with a team of bureaucrats and workers deployed for this very job. This has effectively fuelled speculation that when CM Yogi enters national politics, he would contest for parliamentary elections from Ayodhya. The popularity and accessibility of the chief minister surpasses BJP candidate Lallu Singh’s role as MP.
Another point often discussed by voters is that the BJP leadership has put Ayodhya on the world map as a spiritual capital of the Hindu faith, unlocking its true potential and altering its trajectory for the better, as for most of its post-independence existence, Ayodhya has been neglected and deprived of development and prestige and embroiled in caste and religious battles.
Ayodhya has witnessed a jaw-dropping facelift much to the awe of residents in and around the city with a brand-new airport, a revamped railway station, new roads, bridges and highways, new hotels and restaurants and so on. Faizabad town has also seen a surge of development work including the widening of roads. Real estate prices have quadrupled in the city since the Supreme Court verdict in favour of a Ram Mandir on the disputed land. Construction activity is in flow in Ayodhya to cater to a footfall of millions of tourists from India and around the world. Traders and shops, big and small, are witnessing a boom in business. Essentially, the government has been credited with delivering the economic prospects associated with the grand Ram Temple, as promised.
And ultimately, on the matter of the Ram Mandir itself— the BJP has successfully projected itself as the flag-bearer of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement all the way from the Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 to the temple’s rapid construction and inauguration ceremony. The BJP’s narrative is that it won the battle in court and helped expedite the immediate construction of the temple, delivering within four years after the verdict in November 2019. The nationally televised Pran Pratishtha ceremony in the presence of the Prime Minister, and his speech asserting the tenets of a Ram Rajya, have further swayed Hindu voters in Ayodhya.
BJP Feeds Off Opposition’s Dilemma: The BJP benefits tremendously from the stand of opposition parties on the Ram Mandir. While the decades’ long movement was opposed by leaders of the Congress and Samajwadi Party on several occasions, its journey towards inevitable success left the opposition jittery as it faced a two-fold dilemma— one, that it could not participate in a movement spearheaded by the BJP and two, it feared antagonising its Muslim vote bank.
It has successfully managed to paint their politics as anti-Hindu. It has deployed a popular phrase in action, “Jab tai darshan nehi, tab tab vote nehi”, essentially meaning that as long as opposition leaders do not visit and take blessings at the Ram Temple, they should not receive any votes. Top opposition leaders including Akhilesh Yadav, and the Gandhi family are yet to visit the temple. Moreover, the BJP often questions their decision to not attend the inauguration ceremony in January despite being invited.
The BJP has also tagged the Samajwadi Party, its leading opposition, as the party under whose government the devotees of Lord Ram were fired at referring to the incident of police opening fire on ‘karsevaks’ gathered in Ayodhya amid the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1990. Meanwhile, the Congress party’s record of flip flops on the movement, its government’s statement to the Supreme Court stating that there was no historical evidence to support the belief that Lord Ram had actually existed, and its ex leader Kapil Sibal’s involvement in the court case representing the Sunni Waqf board, are all points that fuel the BJP’s campaign.
While the India bloc’s candidate relies on the Muslim-Yadav-Dalit equation, with Muslim voters forming about 17% of the vote and Dalits forming 24.3%, however, a proper consolidation of Yadav and Dalit votes is not expected to take place in its favour. A considerable chunk of Yadav and Dalit votes are drawn to the BJP owing to its welfare schemes and Ram Rajya politics. Moreover, the BSP is expected to take away a major chunk of Jatav voters, its core constituency.
INDI Alliance’s Strategy: The Samajwadi Party, a partner in the INDIA bloc alliance, has nominated a prominent Dalit leader from this unreserved constituency. Awadhesh Prasad, a member of the Dalit Kori community, was elected in 2022 from the Milkipur (SC) assembly seat and is the only SP MLA in Faizabad LS seat. He has served as an MLA nine times and aims to rally support from the Dalit community, which comprises approximately 5.5 lakh residents in the constituency. The opposition hopes that Dalits who overwhelmingly favoured the BJP in previous elections, would enter their fold.
Moreover, the Samajwadi Party hopes to cash in on the Muslim-Yadav (MY) factor, however, fears are that local voters especially Yadav voters may be swayed to some degree by the Modi-Yogi double engine government, its Hindutva politics, development spree in Ayodhya.
Seeking the blessings of Lord Ram, Awadesh Prasad is a senior Samajwadi Party leader contesting on the might of his own popularity in the seat. In Milkipur, he won in 2022 with a margin of over 13,000 votes. Like his opponent, he is invoking Lord Ram in his speeches, and has voiced the bloc poll pitch to save democracy and the constitution from the BJP.
Both SP and BSP are fighting it out in pursuit of Dalit voters. With a tall Dalit leader in the fray, the SP hopes to curtail the damaging prospects it faces from BSP candidate Sacchidanand Pandey, who is a Brahmin. In the 2022 Assembly elections, in the absence of an alliance with the SP, the BSP scored 11.3 per cent of the vote as opposed to the SP’s 37.9% and BJP’s 45.1%. This signalled that in similar voting patterns, an SP-BSP alliance similar to 2019, could have snatched the seat from the BJP in 2024, but since there is no such alliance, the SP is jittery about BSP’s role this election.
The SP has also recently brought Syed Abbas Ali Zaidi Rushdie Mian back into its fold from the BSP. Rushdie Mian is a former MLA from Rudauli, who was a contender for the BSP ticket from Faizabad. This, SP hopes, will prevent further division of Muslim votes between the two parties.
KEY ISSUES
Compensation: The issue of compensation is surely one that would come up in the elections. During the road widening project of the Ram Path the government took over a lot of land from many in the region. People had expected a fair compensation, and in January of 2023, according to reports, Rs 100 crore had been distributed. However, people feel that compensation has not been adequate. People are not angry but disappointed that the compensation that they had received was 10 times below market rate. The project had affected about 3100 homes and 2200 stores, some which were fully demolished.
Transformation: Before the 2019 verdict, people, especially the youth had lost all hope from the city, which was embroiled in one of the biggest religious court cases in the country. However, ever since the verdict, the city has seen transformation of a surreal nature, and people have realized that. Those who had lost all hope and were preparing to migrate, now see the city with hope of development and economic progress. The improvement of civic amenities such as roads, public toilets, sewage system, water pipeline have all been upgraded to provide the best facility available to the residents and the tourists. People now have one hope from the government to build upon the existing transform and lead Ayodhya into prosperity.
Condition of Seers: Despite reformational activities, one thing that has not changed over the past five years in Ayodhya is the condition of the Seers. While there are many NGOs in action raising lakhs of rupees from across the nation to feed them, there has been no plan from the government to provide meals to the seers. While it could be reason to believe that this might have disappointed them, the word on the ground is that the Ram Temple has changed the mood and not even the absence of food on the plate can change that.
Mosque: Muslims in Ayodhya have stated that while they do not resent the Ram Mandir, they are disappointed at the slow work that’s being done to construct the mosque. While the Supreme Court had directed that the Mandir and the Mosque be constructed simultaneously, the construction of the Mosque has lagged behind. The land was handed over to the Waqf board, still, no progress has been made. The construction started this year in April.
Civic Amenities: While the city of Ayodhya has seen major transformations, conditions outside the city have remained stranded. Dhannipur, the area allotted for the mosque, is still without government schools, only small madrasas and private schools exist. There is no primary health center in the two villages nearby, which are separated by a road. The closest hospital is in Faizabad which is 30-45 mins away.
Garbage Dumping and River Pollution: The water pollution in Saryu has been reaching critical levels due to uncontrolled dumping of effluents into the river. However, the government addressed the issue by stopping the dumping of effluents in the Saryu River. For its disposal, the municipal corporation has implemented several schemes in which many sewage treatment plants (STP) are being set up. Moreover, there is a hybrid plan that is being put into place to treat the sewage of intoxicants. Along with it, garbage dumping is also being addressed and is almost ready to be implemented.
Ram Mandir: It doesn’t really need to be said, but Ram Mandir is the biggest issue in Ayodhya. Reports state that people are in jubilation across the constituency due to the Ram Mandir. The Temple has already put the city on the global map. Plans are underway to bring about major hospitality and tourism infrastructure to ready it for the footfall that the temple has started to generate. Hindu residents feel relieved at the sight of Ram Mandir. They’ve been waiting for this moment for roughly 500 years, and now it is here for them to rejoice.
