Lucknow, Mar 10 (PTI) The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, trouncing its main rival Samajwadi Party, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
According to late night Election Commission figures, out of the state’s 403 seats, the saffron party had won 253 and was leading in one, becoming the first party in over three decades to form a government for a second consecutive time in the state.
The Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav and its allies lost after a spirited bid to dislodge the BJP. When the report last came in, the Samajwadi Party had bagged 108 seats was leading in five.
Adityanath defeated his nearest rival Subhawati Shukla of the SP in the Gorakhpur Urban constituency by a whopping margin of 1.03 lakh votes.
However, his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya lost in Sirathu by 7,337 votes to SP’s Pallavi Patel.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav won from the Karhal assembly seat by a margin of 67,504 votes, defeating Union minister SP Singh Baghel of the BJP. Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu came third in the Tamkuhi Raj constituency, bagging 33,496 votes. Asim Kumar of BJP won the seat while Uday Narayan of Samajwadi Party came second.
Influential OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya, who quit the BJP and the Adityanath cabinet to join the SP ahead of the assembly elections, lost in Fazilnagar by more than 45,000 votes.
As many as 10 ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government also failed to win their seats.
Overall, while the BJP was winning or leading in 254 seats, its two allied Apna Dal (Sonelal) and the NISHAD party have won 12 and six seats respectively, according to the Election Commission (EC) website.
In the opposition camp, the SP was winning or leading in 113 seats and its allies Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has eight seats and the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party had won six.
The Congress and the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik, led by Raghuraj Pratap Singh, got two seats each, while Mayawati’s BSP got just one. Results for five seats were still awaited.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Adityanath’s feat and suggested that the victory in Uttar Pradesh will pave the wave for the BJP’s win in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Lauding BJP workers for ensuring an early Holi by making the party victorious in four states, Modi said its vote share has increased in Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Goa even though it was in power in the states. The party has also retained power in Uttarkhand.
In Lucknow, addressing joyous BJP workers at the party’s state headquarters, Adityanath said the “misleading” campaign run by the Opposition over the past 2-3 days has been set aside by the people who reposed faith in the good governance of the BJP.
He was apparently targeting Samajwadi Party chief over EVM tampering allegations.
“The false propaganda regarding EVMs and election material over the last few days have been rejected,” Adityanath said.
“The People of UP have buried the dynastic politics and also politics of caste and religion by ensuring victory to the BJP and its allies,” Adityanath, who was the BJP’s face in Uttar Pradesh polls, said. According to the EC website, results had been declared on 398 seats by midnight, while counting was going on five seats.
Dara Singh Chauhan, another minister who had quit the cabinet along with Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini to join the SP, has won the Ghosi seat by 22,216.
Saini lost the elections to BJP’s Mukesh Choudhary by 315 votes.
Amid the rout of the party, Congress legislature party leader Aradhana Mishra won from her family’s traditional Rampur Khas constituency in Pratapgarh district.
According to the EC, the BJP’s vote share stands at 41.3 percent, while that of the SP stood at 32 percent. The vote share of the BSP is 12.9 percent and that of the RLD is 2.93 percent. The vote share of the Congress is 2.37 percent while that of AAP and AIMIM was less than .5 percent each.
Though it registered a landslide victory in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party filed to open its account in Uttar Pradesh where it contested on all 403 seats.
Similar was the fate of Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi headed AIMIM which had fielded candidates in 100 seats.
Excited BJP supporters smeared colour (gulal) on each other and rolled out bulldozers in Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Varanasi among other places to celebrate the victory.
Adityanath, who is generally referred to as “Maharaj ji”, earned this new sobriquet of “bulldozer baba” during the current elections due to his frequent reference of the heavy machine that authorities deployed to raze the ill-gotten property of criminals and mafias in the state under his rule.
The BJP and its allies had won over 320 seats in 2017. PTI NAV SNS RT TIR TIR
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Source: The Print
