UP Assembly bypolls: NDA gets 6, SP 2; results in three seats awaited

The Samajwadi Party wrested the Zaidpur constituency from the BJP and retained Rampur while the ruling party and its ally Apna Dal(S) bagged six seats, as counting continued in three other seats of the Uttar Pradesh assembly bypolls on Thursday. Of the 11 seats, where bypolls were held on October 21, eight were held by the BJP while the Pratapgarh seat was held by its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal). Rampur was held by the SP and Jalalpur by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

In the results declared on Thursday, the BJP retained Balha, Gangoh, Lucknow Cantonment, Iglas and Govindnagar seats while the Apna Dal (S) held on to Pratapgarh. In Gangoh, BJP candidate Kirat Singh defeated his nearest rival Nooman Masud of the Congress by over 5,400 votes. In Rampur, Samajwadi Party MP Azam Khan's wife Tazeen Fatma defeated the BJP's Bharat Bhushan by over 7,700 votes.

The BJP was leading in Manikpur and Ghosi and the BSP in Jalalpur. The first result came from Zaidpur, where the SP's Gaurav Kumar wrested the seat from the ruling party by defeating the BJP's Ambrish by 4,165 votes. The Balha (reserved) seat was retained by the BJP, where Saroj Sonekar defeated her nearest rival, the SP's Kiran Bharti, by 46,487 votes.

The Pratapgarh seat went to Apna Dal (S) nominee Rajkumar Pal, who defeated the SP's Brijesh Verma by 29,714 votes. The BJP retained the Lucknow Cantonment seat, where Suresh Chandra Tiwari humbled his nearest rival of the SP by over 35,400 votes. The seat was won by the BJP's Rita Bahuguna Joshi in 2017, but she vacated it after winning the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Allahabad.

The ruling party also retained Iglas seat, where Rajkumar Sahyogi trounced his nearest BSP rival Abhay Kumar by nearly 26,000 votes. In Govindnagar, BJP candidate Surendra Maithani retained the seat defeating his nearest Congress rival Karishma Thakur by over 21,000 votes. The Congress, which was leading after the initial rounds of counting in Gangoh constituency, was overtaken by the BJP in the subsequent rounds.

Following this, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accused the BJP of trying to subvert people's verdict by putting pressure on the district magistrate to reduce the lead of her party's candidate in Gangoh. The BJP is insulting democracy with one of its ministers telephoning the district magistrate again and again to reduce the Congress candidate's margin, Priyanka Gandhi alleged.

"The BJP is full of arrogance that it is trying to change the decision of the people by reducing the Congress candidate's margin at the counting centre in Gangoh. A BJP minister in Uttar Pradesh has called the DM five times to direct him to reduce the lead. This is an insult to democracy," she tweeted.

"The Uttar Pradesh Congress will fight this out strongly. The Election Commission should hold a thorough impartial inquiry into the incident," Gandhi said. As the results came in, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath congratulated the victorious candidates and hoped that through Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mantra of 'sabka saath, sabka vikas' they will work towards winning over 'sabka vishwas'.

He also exuded confidence that all the winners will contribute towards fulfilling peoples aspirations and play an active role in the development of the state. Priyanka Gandhi said she is happy that the vote percentage of the party has imporved in these by elections as compared with the Lok Sabha polls.

"The vote percentage of the party has improved in comparison with the Lok Sabha polls," the Congress leader said and also welcomed the Haryana Assembly results where her party in locked in a tense fight with the ruling BJP. The bypolls were mostly necessitated after legislators got elected to the Lok Sabha. The Ghosi seat fell vacant following the resignation of MLA Phagu Chauhan, after he was appointed as the governor of Bihar.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)