BJP sweeps UP bypolls winning 6 seats; SP bags 2, RLD 1

Lucknow: Months after the ruling BJP’s poor Lok Sabha poll performance in Uttar Pradesh, the saffron party hit the opposition parties out of the park by winning six of the nine Assembly seats in the state where bypolls were held on November 20.

Adding to BJP’s emphatic performance, its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) clinched Meerapur, the lone seat it contested. The Samajwadi Party (SP) emerged victorious on the remaining two seats -- Karhal and Sishamau.

According to the Election Commission (EC), the BJP candidates emerged victorious in Kundarki, Ghaziabad, Khair (SC), Phulpur, Katehari and Majhawan assembly constituencies.

In Phulpur, BJP's Deepak Patel bagged 78,289 votes to defeat his nearest rival and SP nominee Md Mujtaba Siddiqui by 11,305 votes.

In Ghaziabad, saffron party nominee Sanjeev Sharma polled 96,946 votes to trounce his nearest rival Singh Raj Jatav of the SP by 69,351 votes, while his party colleague Surender Diler emerged victorious in Khair, defeating SP's Charu Kain by 38,393 votes.

BJP's Suchismita Maurya, who bagged 77,737 votes, defeated her nearest rival Jyoti Bind of the SP by 4,922 votes in Majhawan, while Dharmraj Nishad of the BJP won the Katehari seat, beating SP's Shobhawati Varma by 34,514 votes.

In Kundarki, BJP’s Ramveer SIngh made short work of Mohammad Rizwan of the SP, winning by 1,44,791 votes.

SP's Tej Pratap Yadav secured 1,04,304 votes to pip BJP's Anujesh Pratap Singh by 14,725 votes in Karhal. The seat fell vacant after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav got elected to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj earlier this year.

Tej Pratap's party colleague Naseem Solanki defeated BJP's Suresh Awasthi by 8,564 votes in Sishamau where Bahujan Samaj Party's (BSP) Virendra Kumar finished a distant third with 1,410 votes.

The bypoll in Sishamau was necessitated after three-time sitting SP MLA Irfan Solanki, the husband of Naseem Solanki, was disqualified following his conviction in a criminal case.

In Meerapur, RLD's Mithilesh Pal bagged 84,304 votes to defeat her nearest rival Sumbul Rana of the SP by 30,796 votes.

In the 2022 Assembly elections, the BJP won Phulpur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan and Khair, while the SP emerged victorious in Sishamau, Katehari, Karhal and Kundarki.

The RLD, which was an SP ally then, won the Meerapur seat.

The Congress stayed away from the bypolls this time after extending support to its INDIA bloc ally SP.

The BSP fielded candidates in all nine seats, while the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) put up nominees in Ghaziabad, Kundarki and Meerapur.

The Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) led by Chandrashekhar Aazad was also in the fray in all the seats barring Sishamau.

Presently, the BJP has 251 MLAs and the SP 105 in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. BJP allies Apna Dal (Sonelal), RLD, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party and Nishad Party also have members in the House.

The Congress and the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik have two seats each, while the BSP has one MLA in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly.