Samajwadi Party scores in all regions of Uttar Pradesh, takes pole position

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party’s jump from five Lok Sabha seats in 2019 to pole position five years later marks a stun-ning comeback against all expectations, with the bonus of an all-round performance spanning all four regions of this vast and diverse state. Late Tuesday, Akhilesh Yadav’s party was sitting prettywith 37 seats.
In Rohilkhand, SP and its ally Congress won five seats each, including Kairana by amargin of 69,116 votes, Muzaffarnagar by 24,672 votes and Firozabad by 89,312votes.The rural seat of Mainpuri also went SP’s way. At last count, Etah was almost in the kitty.
In Moradabad, SP’s margin of victory was 1.05 lakh votes, while Muslim-dom-inant Rampur gave the party a winning margin of 87,434 votes. In Sambhal, SP was victorious by 1.3 lakh votes.
Its INDIA bloc partner Congress won the Saharanpur seat by 64,542 votes.
In the central region, SP won 11 seats — Fatehpur, Kaushambi, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Kheri, Dhaurahra, Mohanlalganj, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Etawah and Kannauj.
In Kheri, SP’s Utkarsh Verma Madhur defeated Union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni by 34,329 votes.
Sultanpur saw Rambhual Nishad trounce BJP’s Maneka Gandhi by 43,174 votes.
Another SP candidate, R K Chaudhary, defeated Union minister Kaushal Kishore in the Mohanlalganj reserved seat.
Congress won five seats in the central region — Rae Bareli, Amethi, Allahabad, Barabanki and Sitapur.
In the south eastern part, SP won 13 seats, including Jaunpur, where BSP turncoat Babu Singh Kushwaha defeated BJP’s Kripa Shankar Singh by 94,766 votes. Priya Saroj won the reserved Machhlishahr seat for SP by 34,536 votes.
Afzal Ansari, brother of don Mukhtar Ansari, won Ghazipur by 1.24 lakh votes. In Chandauli, SP’s Virendra Singh defeated Union minister Mahendra Nath Pandey by 21,565 votes. Party nominee Chhotelal won the Robertsganj reserved seat by 92,726 votes.
In northeast UP, the party won Shravasti, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Azamgarh, Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia and the reserved Lalganj seat.
Bundelkhand, too, saw an SP surge. Narayan Das Ahirwar won Jalaun by 53,898 votes and Krishna Devi Shivshanker Patel triumphed in Banda by 71,210 votes.