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In first UP Assembly election, Akhilesh Yadav records massive win in Karhal
2022 UP election: This is Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's first Assembly election, having previously been a Lok Sabha MP.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has won his maiden state election from Karhal - in his family stronghold of Mainpuri - by beating the BJP's SP Singh Baghel by over 67,000 votes. Yadav polled over 1.47 lakh votes to Baghel's 80,045. A former UP chief minister, he is also is a three-time Lok Sabha MP from Kannauj, meaning he must now resign from that post if he is to stay a MLA.
Karhal is in Akhilesh Yadav's home turf and has voted for the Samajwadi Party in every election since 1993, except in 2002, when the BJP flipped the seat.
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Yadav emerged as the ruling BJP's biggest rival in the 2022 UP Assembly election, having stitched together a 'rainbow' alliance of regional parties, including Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal and Om Prakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, to challenge the Yogi Adityanath government.
Yogi Adityanath also contested his first Assembly election - from his stronghold of Gorakhpur (urban) - and has recorded similarly emphatic victory.
Adityanath beat the Samajwadi Party's Subhawati Shukla by over 90,000 votes
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However, Yadav's hopes of a repeat of the 2012 election, when his Samajwadi Party swept to power and made him chief minister, were dashed after the BJP lived up to exit poll predictions and produced a powerful win.
Expected to get well over 250 seats (independent of its allies) in the 403-member Assembly, the party has done just that.
At the time of writing Election Commission data gave the BJP 158 wins and 96 leads, while the Samajwadi Party has 61 wins and 51 leads.
Yadav can, however, take consolation from the fact the Samajwadi Party has cut the BJP's lead from 2017 and improved its score; in the last poll the BJP won a massive 312 of the 403 seats and the Samajwadi Party just 47.
The Congress slumped to yet another embarrassing defeat at the polls, with jsut two win. Rahul Gandhi tweeted to say he ‘humbly accept(s) the people’s verdict' and was promptly trolled by union minister Smriti Irani.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who led her party's campaign in the state, this morning called on the cadre to not be disheartened and keep fighting.
