Lucknow, May 25(UNI) Though the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) retained 62 of the 71 seats it won in 2014 in Uttar Pradesh, but failed to get the desired support in the western part of the state.
In 2014, the BJP and its allies won 73 seats of which its share was 71 while in this election the party and its ally Apna Dal won 64 seats with BJP’s share being 62 seats. BJP lost 10 seats – seven of them in western UP and three in eastern UP. Though it made an addition with grabbing the Amethi seat by wresting it from Congress.
BJP grabbed all the four seats of Bundelkhand and majority of seats in central UP.
The saffron party lost the prestigious Saharapur seat where the sitting BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal lost to Haji Fazlur Rahman of BSP by over 22,000 votes.
The BJP suffered the worst defeat in Moradabad division comprising six Parliamentary Constituencies and the party lost all the seats. BJP’s loss was gathbandhan’s gain as Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) equally shared between themselves.
All these seats were earlier held by BJP.
The SP won constituencies of Moradabad, Sambhal and Rampur – where Md Azam Khan defeated cine star Jaya Prada. In Moradabad, Dr ST Hasan defeated his nearest rival Kunwar Sarvesh Singh by a margin of 97,878 votes while in Sambhal Dr Shafiqur Rahman Barq defeated Parmeshwar lal saini by 1,74,826 votes.
On the other hand the BSP won the seats of Amroha, Bijnore and Nagina. In Amroha Danish Ali of BSP defeated Kanwar Singh by a margin of over 63,000 votes. In Bijnore, Malook Nagar got better of Raja Bhartendra Singh by 69,941 votes while Girish Chandra defeated Dr Yashwant Singh in Nagina by over 1.66 lakh votes.
Interestingly, western Uttar Pradesh was under the focus of all the political parties. The mahagathbandhan began its joint rally from Deoband where BSP chief Mayawati asked Muslims to vote en bloc in favour of alliance drawing ire of Election Commission and she was banned from electioneering for 48 hours.
Even the BJP leaders started their campaign for 2019 elections from western UP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi started his campaign from Meerut while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath began electioneering from Saharanpur after offering prayer ar Shankumbari Devi’s temple. The issue of Ali- Bajranjbali too raked during the campaigning in western UP.
In eastern UP, BJP lost in Ghazipur where Union Minister lost to Afzal Ansari of BSP by over 1,20,000 votes and in Jaunpur KP Singh lost to Shyam Singh Yadav of BSP. Besides in Lalganj seat sitting BJP member Neelam Sonkar lost to BSP's Sangeeta Nishad by over 1.60 lakh votes.
But among the seven phased polls in UP, the BJP won all the 13 seats that went to polls in the fourth phase while in the fifth phase it just lost one seat of Rae Bareli to Congress and grabbed the remaining 13 seats.
The sixth phase of polls in eastern UP was also not so good for the BJP as in 14 seats, BJP won just nine seats while BSP won 4 and one was won by the SP but in the seventh phase , BJP and its ally won 11 seats and BSP won the rest 2.
In the first two phases, of 8 seats each, BJP could won 6 seats each while BSP won two each. In the third phase BJP won again six seats and SP grabbed the remaining four.
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