LUCKNOW: In a crucial by-poll battle which was being witnessed as the referendum on Yogi Adityanath government, the ruling BJP came out with a convincing win wherein it retained six of the seven seats here on Tuesday. However, the lone seat left was taken away by the Samajwadi Party. The BSP and Congress, also in the fray, drew a blank.
Held along with the second phase of Bihar Assembly elections under the shadow of pandemic, the sic seats which the ruling BJP retined included Naugaon Sadat in Amroha, Bulandshahr, Tundla (Firozabad), Ghatampur (Kanpur Dehat), Bangarmau (Unnao) and Deoria Sadar. The Samajwadi Party retained Malhani in Jaunpur where its candidate Lucky Yadav registered victory with a margin of 4632 votes over independent candidate Dhananjay Singh.
However, the main opposition SP slipped to third slot in Bangarmau and Ghatampur where Congress could pull it off to second position.
Attributing the party success to team work, BJP cadre’s diligence and dynamic leadership of PM Narednra Modi, UP CM Yogi Aditynath summed up the party performance in bypolls and Bihar by saying: “Modi hai to mumkin hai”.
"I congratulate the BJP for the stellar performance under the leadership of PM Modi and JP Nadda. Today's result has proved that be it Bihar or bypolls, "Modi hain toh mumkin hai". The people have proved this saying. The way PM Modi has led India internationally and worked for the welfare of all sections including women and farmers, has been awarded by the people’s approval in the form of votes,” said CM Yogi.
"In the bypolls, the Bharatiya Janata Party has repeated its performance of the 2017 State Assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This points that BJP will perform well in the upcoming elections also," said the CM. He added that the results of UP bypoll were an endorsement of his government’s handling of pandemic through medical infrastructure and also the relief provided to deprived, down trodden and suffering during COVId-19 besides overall performance of his government.
While the BJP secured 36.73 per cent of the total votes polled as against 23.61 per cent bagged by the SP and 18.97 per cent by the BSP. Congress, once again could not make a mark in the political battle field of UP as it could muster just 7.53 per cent vote share.
Seven seats had witnessed an average voting percentage of 53.6 per cent which was much lower than the 64.07 per cent of 2017 assembly elections.
The Naugawan Sadat was won by BJP candidate Sangeeta Chauhan, widow of cricketer turned politician and BJP MLA Chetan Chauhan, defeating her nearest rival Javed Abbas by a margin of 15077 votes.
In Bulandshahr, where the BJP had fielded Usha Sirohi, widow of BJP veteran MLA
Virendra Sirohi, defeated her nearest rival Mohammad Yunus of BSP by a margin
of 21,702 votes.
In Tundla, the seat which got vacated following election of BJP MLA SP Singh Baghel to Lok Sabha in 2019, BJP candidate Prem Pal Dhangar defeated his nearest rival Maharaj Singh Dhangar of SP by a margin of 17683 votes. This seat also saw a three corner contest with BSP candidate Sanjeev Kumar Chak bagging nearly 23% of the total votes polled.
Bangarmau seat, which had fallen vacant following conviction of BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Senger in a rape case, was won by BJP candidate Srikant Katiyar by a margin of 31,398 votes defeating Arti Bajpai of Congress.
In Ghatampur BJP candidate Upendra Paswan defeated Kuldeep Sankhwar of BSP by a margin of 23820 votes. Simialrly, in Deoria BJP candidate Satya Prakash Mani Tripathi defeated SP candidate Brahma Shankar Tripathi by a margin of 20,089 votes.