Varanasi/Nagpur: The BJP faced a twin political embarrassment in Legislative Council election results announced on Wednesday, as the Samajwadi Party retained both Varanasi MLC seats in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency and Congress’s Abhijeet Wanjari retained the Nagpur Graduates’ seat in the RSS’s bastion.
While the BJP maintained its overall strength in Uttar Pradesh by winning six of 11 seats, the defeats in Varanasi and Nagpur have handed the opposition a powerful symbolic narrative months before the 2027 state assembly elections.
The results are particularly significant because they came in constituencies associated with the BJP’s highest-profile leadership — Modi in Varanasi and the RSS, Devendra Fadnavis and Nitin Gadkari in Nagpur — raising questions about the party’s connect with teachers and graduate voters in its traditional strongholds.
Nagpur: Congress Retains Seat
In Maharashtra’s Nagpur Graduates’ constituency, sitting Congress MLC Abhijeet Wanjari won a second consecutive term, defeating BJP’s Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes. Wanjari received 67,231 votes against Kohale’s 63,960, with independent Nitesh Karale also a significant factor.
The loss is especially awkward for the BJP because Nagpur is the RSS headquarters and the home region of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. Congress leaders used the result to argue that the party was losing ground even in areas regarded as core BJP-RSS territory,as reported by Hindustan Times.
Statewide Picture
The setback did not translate into a statewide UP defeat. The BJP won six of the 11 seats, matching its 2020 tally, while the SP won five—an improvement from three in 2020. The BJP retained Meerut’s graduate and teachers’ seats, Bareilly-Moradabad Teachers’, Lucknow Teachers’, Agra Graduates’, and the Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers’ seat.
The SP’s other gains included Lucknow Graduates’, Agra Teachers’, and Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’. Its Lucknow win was notable because the constituency is represented in the Lok Sabha by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
What It Signals
These council elections are not a direct referendum on general voter sentiment, since only teachers and graduates vote. Still, they offer a useful read on organisational strength and educated-constituency politics ahead of the 2027 state polls.
For the BJP, the results expose vulnerability in prestige constituencies despite continued strength in western and northern UP. Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya acknowledged that the party had expected more seats and said it would introspect. For the SP, the Varanasi double win provides momentum and a narrative advantage; for Congress, Nagpur offers a rare high-visibility victory against the BJP.
