UP, Bihar bypoll results:SP-BSP leaves BJP stunned

Patna, Mar 14: The by-elections in the Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar turned out to be a setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in the government in both the states. The party managed to retain one Assembly seat in Bihar out of the two that went for mid-term polling and losing the solitary Lok Sabha seat which was up for grabs. In Uttar Pradesh it lost both the Lok Sabha seats to the Opposition Samajwadi Party.
BJP suffered a setback in the home turf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while losing Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya’s constituency too. Samajwadi Party candidates have clinched a win in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur constituencies of Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party’s Praveen Kumar Nishad defeated BJP’s Upendra Dutt Shukla with 21,881 votes in Gorakhpur while in Phulpur, Samajwadi Party candidate Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel defeated the ruling party’s Kaushlendra Singh Patel with 59,613 votes.
The by-elections had taken an interesting turn in the state after Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati went out of character and announced support to the Samajwadi Party candidates to defeat the BJP.
The results became clear in the early trends of the counting, which also had an echo in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly when the Leader of Opposition Ram Gobind Chaudhary pointed out to the Chair that media persons were being barred from entering the counting centre in Gorakhpur, and described it as “murder of democracy”.
Amid uproarious scenes created by jubilant SP members, Speaker Hriday Narayan Dixit adjourned the House briefly. Ten nominees are in the fray from Gorakhpur, while 22 candidates contested from Phulpur.
Meanwhile, overjoyed Samajwadi Party workers, in a rare political event were joined by Bahujan Samajwadi Party workers to celebrate BJP’s defeat.
The elections though meant little in terms of numbers in Parliament, where the BJP has an overwhelming majority, but they will dampen the saffron party’s ‘invincible’ image. The party had clinched 71 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. While Maurya had won Phulpur for the party in 2014 for the first time, this will be the first time in 26 years that a non-BJP candidate is elected from Gorakhpur. The city had been a BJP turf since 1991 and had chosen Adityanath as its representative in the Lok Sabha for five consecutive elections. Before him, his mentor Yogi Avaidyanath was MP from the seat.
Low voter turnout was recorded at both the constituencies. The bypolls were necessitated after Adityanath and Maurya vacated the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats respectively, following their election to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Grand Alliance in Bihar won the Araria Lok Sabha and the Jahanabad Assembly seats while the BJP managed to retain the Bhabhua Assembly seat in Bihar by elections.
This was the first electoral battle in the Bihar since Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who also heads the JD(U), walked out of the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress and joined the BJP-led NDA last year, and was being touted as a litmus test for the new coalition.
The by-election to the Araria seat was necessitated by the death of sitting RJD lawmaker Mohd Taslimuddin, from where his son Sarafaraz Alam has won against the BJP’s Pradip Kumar Singh who had won the seat in 2009 and finished runner-up in 2014. The party finally won the seat with over 61,988 votes.
RJD candidate Kumar Krishna Mohan alias Suday Yadav won by 35,036 votes in Jehanabad over his nearest Janata Dal (United) (JDU) rival Abhiram Sharma.
The BJP’s Rinki Pandey won by over 15,490 votes over Sambhu Patel of the Congress, an RJD ally, in Bhabhua.
Fifty-seven percent votes were recorded in Araria while the voter turnout was 54.03 percent and 50.06 percent in Jehanabad and Bhabhua respectively.
The by-elections in both states for all five seats were held on Sunday.