The other element to the BJP’s success was its social coalition of the upper caste and non-yadav OBCs. This social base too has fractured, not so much because of the loss of brahmin vote but because of the substantial erosion of the OBC vote. The BJP’s upper caste vote — brahmin as well as non-brahmin — has declined from its peak of about 75 per cent to just about 45 per cent, as it has rapidly lost the support of the poor among the upper caste. The absence of a brahmin leader does not seem to have made much difference, for Kalyan Singh’s popularity did not vary much across the brahmin-rajput divide. Nor has the presence of an OBC leader made a difference to the steady erosion of the OBC vote from about 45 to merely 22 or so, except among lodhs where the BJP did increase its support. In that sense, Kalyan Singh proved to be neither an electoral asset nor a liability.

Thus the BJP faces a challenge of the kind the Congress has faced in UP in the 1990s: its issue has lost salience, its leaders have lost credibility and its challengers are walking away with different slices of its Hindu rainbow. Such challenges are not impossible to respond to, but they cannot be fixed by routine political management.