UP Bypolls Results: SP wrests Phulpur, Gorakhpur seats from BJP

Gorakhpur: In a huge blow to ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samajwadi Party won on both the seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur in Lok Sabha bypolls.

SP wrests the Phulpur seat from BJP. Nagendra Singh Patel from SP, who had taken an unassailable lead of 22,848 votes over BJP's Kaushlendra Singh Patel in Phulpur, gave him a setback by 59,613 votes when the results were announced on Wednesday. He got a total of 3,42,796 votes while Kaushlendra Pratap Singh got 2,83,183 votes.

Giving a shock to Bharatiya Janata party's candidate Upendra Shukla in Gorakhpur, Samajwadi Party's Praveen Kumar Nishad defeated him with a huge margin of 21, 961 votes with 45,6437 votes falling in his kitty.

Both, the Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats were vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya respectively. The polling was held on Sunday last.

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It may be mentioned that, with just 37 per cent of the votes polled in Phulpur and 42 per cent in Gorakhpur, officials admitted that the BJP was unlikely to reverse the expected result.

“This is a rejection of both (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and Yogi (Adityanath),” Samajwadi Party spokesman Anurag Bhadauria said.

In 2014, the BJP stunningly won 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats while one of its allies secured two. The Samajwadi Party won from five seats. The Congress and BSP drew a blank.

The Samajwadi Party took early lead right from the beginning of the vote count that began on Wednesday morning and steadily built up the gap with its BJP rivals as officials counted the tens of thousands of votes polled in the Sunday by-elections.

Gorakhpur District Magistrate Rajeev Rautela earlier sparked a storm by barring journalists from entering the counting centre and did not announce details of counting after the first two rounds.

While Samajwadi Party activists celebrated in Phulpur and Gorakhpur, the BJP was stunned into silence.

In a determined bid to avoid a split in the opposition vote, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) campaigned actively for the Samajwadi Party, otherwise its bitter foe.