It may not have fared well at the state level, but the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) almost made a clean sweep in the NCR area of Ghaziabad district, bagging four out of five Assembly seats in the UP polls, results of which were declared on Tuesday.
However, it was Congress and Samajwadi
Party (SP) who emerged winners on one and two seats, respectively, in the Panchsheel Nagar (formerly Hapur) district.
The BSP candidates emerged as winners or remained runners-up during the tough contest on a total of eight Assembly seats in Ghaziabad and Panchsheel Nagar districts.
In Ghaziabad district, Suresh Kumar Bansal, Amarpal Sharma, Wahab Chaudhary, Zakir Ali (all from BSP) and Sudesh Sharma (from SP) emerged as winners from Ghaziabad, Sahibabad, Murad Nagar, Loni and Modi Nagar Assembly seats, respectively.
In Panchsheel Nagar, Gajraj Singh (INC) from Hapur, Dharmesh Tomar (SP) from Dholana and Madan Chauhan (SP) from Garhmukteshwar emerged as winners.
It was a setback for the BJP in both districts as it failed to open an account. Senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh is currently an MP from Ghaziabad. It suffered a setback as its present MLA Sunil Sharma lost by 24,000 votes from Sahibabad constituency to his BSP rival.
Political analysts say the reason behind BSP sweeping in Ghaziabad was a majority of Muslim votes in their favour.
Atul Garg from the BJP, who also lost from Ghaziabad seat, said he estimated the Muslim voters to go to the Congress.
“It is peoples’ verdict and we respect it,” said BJP’s Western-UP media coordinator SP Singh.
Zakir Ali from BSP, who won from Loni seat, said the locals voted against the land-mafias. Congress candidate Gajraj Singh defeated BSP’s Dharampal Singh by 22,000 votes.
In Dholana, Dharmesh Tomar defeated the BJP and won by 9,000 votes. In Garhmukteshwar, present SP MLA Madan Chauhan retained his seat.