Lucknow, June 5 -- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was expected to do well in Uttar Pradesh this time, better than 2019 when it won 62 of the state's 80 seats, and perhaps even better than 2014, when it won 71. After all, this was the state where it won successive assembly elections with clear majorities in 2014 and 2019. This was the state that is home to Narendra Modi's constituency. And this was the state run by the strongman-monk Yogi Adityanath, spoken of in some circles as a possible successor to Modi himself.

But voters had other plans. The BJP won just 33 seats in the state (the larger National Democratic Alliance won 36). Worse still, from its perspective, the INDIA bloc won 43 seats, led by a resurgent Samajwadi Party (SP) tha...