Lucknow: In a major reversal of the trend witnessed in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance on Saturday won seven of the nine assembly seats that went to bypolls and restricted the Samajwadi Party (SP) to merely two seats.
While the BJP won Ghaziabad, Kundarki, Khair, Katehari, Majhawan and Phulpur, its ally the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) retained Meerapur. The SP retained Sishamau and Karhal, but lost Kundarki and Katehari to the BJP.
In the Lok Sabha polls, the SP had emerged as the largest party in Uttar Pradesh winning as many as 37 seats while the BJP was down to 33 seats.
The bypoll results come as a boost to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who had been at the forefront of the bypoll fight in the northern state.
The credit for this “historic win goes to the leadership of PM Narendra Modi and his guidance” because his leadership and guidance takes the double-engine government forward on the path of protection, prosperity and good governance and inspires them “to implement programmes of public welfare on the ground”, the Uttar Pradesh CM said.
“This is the seal of public faith on PM Modi’s leadership, the public believes that Modi ji’s leadership, his policies, his decisions favour the country and the society and this is the seal of the public on that favourability,” he told party office-bearers at BJP’s Lucknow headquarters.
“I thank the office-bearers and workers of the BJP who have taken the programmes and achievements of the double engine government to the public and I congratulate them,” Adityanath said, adding that under PM Modi, a good coordination of tradition and development had started in the entire country.
“A coordination involving protection, good governance and the economic prosperity of the country is visible to all of us. What was once a dream is clear to us today and this is why, the BJP coalition has won in seven seats and these seven lotuses (read ‘seats’) from UP are dedicated to the campaign of Modi ji.”
On his part, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav asserted that the tactics of reducing the election to corruption had been captured in pictures and have come out before the world, he said in an indirect reference to a police officer caught on camera pointing a pistol at Muslim women at Meerapur in Muzaffarnagar district and other allegations of the minority community members being discouraged from voting.
“From the world to the country to Uttar Pradesh saw the most distorted form of politics in this bypoll. The time can belong to lies but not the era. The real struggle has begun now…,’ the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister posted on social media platform ‘X’.
Major upset in Kundarki & Katehari
The biggest upset for the SP came from Muslim-dominated Kundarki which the BJP has won for the first time since 1993. The seat was with SP’s Zia Ur Rehman Barq, who was elected as an MP from Sambhal this year.
BJP’s Ramveer Singh won the seat by a margin of 1,44,791 votes, relegating SP’s Mohammad Rizwan to the second spot. Notably, Singh was the only Hindu candidate in the seat where 11 Muslim candidates were in the fray.
In Katehari, which was held by SP stalwart Lalji Verma since 2017, BJP’s Dharmraj Nishad won by a margin of 34,514 votes. Verma’s wife Shobhawati Verma came second in this constituency.
The tightest contest was witnessed in Majhawan, which was vacated by BJP’s Vinod Kumar Bind after he was elected as the Bhadohi MP. Here, BJP’s Shuchismita Maurya defeated her nearest rival, SP’s Jyoti Bind, by a margin of 4,922 votes.
In Phulpur, BJP’s Deepak Patel defeated SP’s Mujtaba Siddiqui by a margin of 11,305 votes. The win margins of BJP’s Surender Diler and Sanjeev Sharma were 38,393 and 69,351 votes in Khair and Ghaziabad. Both had SP candidates as their closest rivals.
RLD’s Mithlesh Pal defeated SP’s Sumbul Rana by 30,796 votes in Meerapur.
In the high-profile Karhal seat, Tej Pratap Yadav, grandson of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother Ratan Singh Yadav, defeated BJP’s Anujesh Yadav by a margin of 1,47,25 votes.
Jailed ex-MLA Irfan Solanki’s wife Naseem of SP defeated BJP’s Suresh Awasthi in Sishamau seat by 8,564 votes.
After Saturday’s results, the BJP’s tally in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly has increased to 254 seats while the SP is down to 103 seats. Among the BJP allies, the Apna Dal has 13 MLAs, the RLD 8, the SBSP 6 MLAs, and the NISHAD Party has been reduced to 4 (the BJP decided to field its own candidate at Majhawan). The Congress and the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik have 2 MLAs each while the BSP has 1.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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