Shahira Naim
Tribune News Service
Lucknow, October 24
Winning three seats, the Samajwadi Party emerged as the net gainer in the byelections to the 11 Assembly seats, the results of which were declared on Thursday.
Despite intensive campaigning by CM Yogi Adityanath and his team of ministers, the BJP failed to measure up to its claim of sweeping all 11 seats. Technically, it won only seven, as the Pratapgarh seat went to its alliance partner Apna Dal.
The BJP has won the Iglas (Aligarh), Lucknow Cantt, Govind Nagar (Kanpur), Manikpur (Chitrakoot) , Ghosi (Mau), Balha (Bahraich) and Ganghoh (Saharanpur) seats while the Apna Dal retained the Pratapgarh seat. The alliance had won all these seats in 2017.
SP had only the Rampur seat in its kitty. While it retained this politically significant seat for the 10th consecutive time, it added Zaidpur (Barabanki) and Jalalpur (Ambedkar Nagar) seats to its tally, taking its strength to 49 in the Vidhan Sabha. BJP candidate Kirat Singh defeated Congress candidate Nooman Masood in Gangoh (Saharanpur) by 5,419 votes.
Interestingly, Masood was leading by 3,880 votes till the 26th round. However, by the 28th round he started trailing and finally lost. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hit out at the ruling party, saying: “The BJP is so arrogant that in Gangoh it made our winning candidate leave the counting centre so that their minister could reverse the people’s decision. The DM was called five times to reduce the lead. This is an insult of democracy”.
Another surprise result was thrown up in Jalalpur BSP’s sitting seat. Here BSP’s Dr Chhaya Verma dramatically lost despite leading till the 18th round. SP’s Subhash Rai who had been trailing in the third spot rapidly recovered and emerged the winner.
Alarm bells for Maya
The bypoll results serve as an early alarm to BSP supremo Mayawati. The party lost its Jalalpur seat, came second in Iglas and its candidate was third in Manikpur, once its stronghold
In the 2017 Vidhan Sabha elections, the BSP cornered 22.2% of votes, which came down to 19.26% in the Lok Sabha elections. It has further shrunk to 17% in the bypoll
On the contrary, the Congress has increased its vote share from 6.2% in 2017 to 6.31% in 2019 LS poll. It has almost doubled it to 11.6% as per today’s results
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