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Lok Sabha bypolls: BJP wrests Samajwadi Party bastions Rampur, Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath and a battery of BJP ministers and senior party leaders had campaigned for the party candidates in Azamgarh and Rampur.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wrested the Samajwadi Party (SP) bastions of Azamgarh and Rampur in the Lok Sabha bypolls for which the results were declared on Sunday.
Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua won the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat, defeating his nearest rival Dharmendra Yadav of the SP by 8679 votes, according to the Election Commission of India, after a neck-and- neck battle for hours.
The BJP candidate polled 3,12,768 votes and the SP nominee got 3,04,089 votes. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Shah Alam Guddu Jamali made the contest triangular in Azamgarh and polled 2,66,210 votes.
In Rampur, BJP candidate Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi defeated his nearest rival Mohammad Asim Raja of the Samajwadi Party by 42,192 votes. Lodhi polled 3,67,397 votes and Raja got 3,25,205 votes.
In a tweet, chief minister Yogi Adityanath said, “The historic victory of the BJP candidates in the by-elections to the Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats is the result of the welfare policies of the double engine BJP government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had won the Azamgarh seat by 2.59 lakh votes while senior party leader Azam Khan had won the Rampur seat by 1.09 lakh votes. Akhilesh Yadav and Azam Khan vacated the Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats after the two leaders were elected to the Uttar Pradesh assembly from Karhal (Mainpuri) and Rampur, respectively, in March.
In the 2022 assembly election in February/March, the SP bagged three assembly seats Rampur Sadar, Suar and Chamrua which are part of the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency. The SP also won all five assembly seats — Mehnagar, Sagadi, Gopalpur, Azamgarh Sadar and Mubarakpur —in the Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency even as the BJP swept to power for a second successive term in Uttar Pradesh.
The SP fielded former MP Dharmendra Yadav, cousin of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, for the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat. The party nominated Mohammad Asim Raja, a close aide of SP leader Azam Khan, for the Rampur Lok Sabha seat.
Khan campaigned after he was released on bail from Sitapur jail on May 20. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav did not campaign for the party candidates in Azamgarh and Rampur.
Reacting to the result, Azam Khan alleged that polling was not impartial and the government machinery was misused by the BJP to defeat the SP candidate in the bypoll.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath and a battery of BJP ministers and senior party leaders had campaigned for the party candidates in Azamgarh and Rampur.
SK Srivastava, a political observer, said, “The BJP’s victory in Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha constituencies, considered strong SP forts, will set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Despite the Modi wave in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had failed to win the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat then. Though the BJP bagged the Rampur seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, it lost the seat in 2019. Riding on the Yadav-Muslim alliance, the SP won both Azamgarh and Rampur seats (in 2019).”
State BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh said the party had won 62 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 and now the tally had gone up to 64 with the wins in Rampur and Azamgarh.
The BJP will repeat the performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha election by bagging over 70 seats, he said.
