Only a few hours into the counting of votes on Monday evening, Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav cancelled a press conference announced in connection with the local body polls.

That underlines why the news in Uttar Pradesh is not just that his ruling Samajwadi Party has suffered a major setback in what is considered a dress rehearsal for the 2007 Assembly elections. The news is also that his party had no inkling of what was coming.

The great socialist disconnect with the ground ensured that Mulayam could not see beyond crowds lapping up the Rs 500 cheques he doled out in unemployment allowance and the Rs 20,000 cheques he doled out under the Kanya Vidya Dhan scheme.

The evidence is clear: even in the Yadav clan’s fiefdom in Mainpuri and Kannauj, and across the Yadav belt in neighbouring districts Independents supported by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have emerged winners.

In the Mainpuri Nagar Panchayat, falling in the Lok Sabha constituency of Mulayam’s nephew Dharmendra Yadav, BSP backed candidates won four seats while the Congress and BJP won one each. In son Akhilesh Yadav’s Kannauj Nagar Palika, BSP supported Haji Mohammed Raees not only won, but the SP’s candidate Haji Mohammed Naiyum forfeited his deposit.

This anti-incumbency-so strong that it has touched the Yadavs too, and fostered by worsening law and order and the increasing disenchantment of Muslims-is proving the undoing of the Samajwadi Party.

The Congress has succeeded in splitting the Muslim vote at many places as suggested by its mayoral victories in Bareilly, Allahabad and Jhansi, and the huge fight its Lucknow candidate Manzoor Ahmed put up against the BJP.