While Samajwadi Party celebrates victory BJP was stunned into silence over defeat
LATEST UPDATE: Samajwadi Party candidate Pravin Kumar Nishad was elected to the Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, a seat vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, defeating the BJP’s Upendra Dutt Shukla by 21,881 votes.
2-Samajwadi Party candidate Nagendra Singh Patel was elected to the Lok Sabha from Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, defeating his nearest BJP opponent by 59,613 votes, an Election Commission official said.
Our Correspondent / Lucknow
Ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh today received a big jolt as Samajwadi Party won both the Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur which were vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.
With the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) backing its bitter rival Samajwadi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party got a shock defeat in both the constituencies in what is seen as a major embarrassment to Adityanath in particular.
Earlier report:
Election Commission officials said the Samajwadi Party’s Nagendra Singh Patel had taken an unassailable lead of 22,848 votes over BJP’s Kashlendra Singh Patel in Phulpur, which along with Gorakhpur voted on Sunday.
Pravin Nishad of the Samajwadi Party was leading by 19,201 votes in Gorakhpur, which Aditynath had won five consecutive times, over the BJP candidate Upendra Dutt Shukla.
With just 37 per cent of the votes polled in Phulpur and 42 per cent in Gorakhpur, officials admitted that the BJP was unlikely to reverse the expected result.
In 2014, the BJP won 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats while one of its allies secured two. The Samajwadi Party won from five seats. The Congress and BSP drew a blank.
The Samajwadi Party took early lead right from the beginning of the vote count that began in the morning and steadily built up the gap with its BJP rivals as officials counted the tens of thousands of votes polled in the Sunday by-elections.
Gorakhpur District Magistrate Rajeev Rautela earlier sparked a storm by barring journalists from entering the counting centre and did not announce details of counting after the first two rounds.
In a determined bid to avoid a split in the opposition vote, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) campaigned actively for the Samajwadi Party, otherwise its bitter foe.
RJD leads in Araria, Jahanabad, BJP in Bhabhua
The RJD-led Grand Alliance in Bihar took a lead on Wednesday over the BJP in the Araria Lok Sabha and the Jahanabad Assembly seats while the BJP was ahead in the Bhabhua Assembly seat.
After trailing initially, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) moved ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Araria.
After 16 rounds of vote count, RJD’s Sarfaraz Alam took a lead of more than 15,000 votes in Araria over the BJP’s Pradip Kumar Singh.
RJD candidate Suday Yadav led by more than 16,000 votes in Jahanabad over his nearest Janata Dal-United (JD-U) rival Abhiram Sharma.
The BJP’s Rinki Pandey was leading by over 6,000 votes over Sambhu Patel of the Congress, a RJD ally, in Bhabhua. The by-elections were held on Sunday.
