Lucknow, Aug 21 (Inditop.com) Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) did very well in assembly by-elections Friday by bagging three of the four seats that went to the polls Aug 18.
The Congress party’s impressive performance in the Lok Sabha elections had raised its expectations. However, it suffered a major setback by losing the security deposit on two seats and finishing on second and third on two others.
BSP bagged Malihabad (Lucknow), Vidhuna (Kanpur Dehat) and Moradabad (Central) seats, while Rashtriya Lok Dal of Ajit Singh retained Morna (Moradabad).
Samajwadi Party too failed to even make its presence felt at any of the places. However, Ajit Singh’s RLD managed to bag one seat in its Jat stronghold of Morna in Muzaffarnagar district of western Uttar Pradesh, with its candidate Mithilesh Pal marching ahead of others. He fought in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On the other hand, the Congress trailed at the fifth position there.
Even more humiliating for the Congress was its defeat in state capital Lucknow’s rural seat of Malihabad, where its nominee Satya Lal Kannaujiya finished fourth and even lost his security deposit.
He polled a paltry 22,350 votes against BSP’s winner Siddhartha Shankar, who got 62,617 votes. Shankar defeated his closest independent rival Kaushal Kishore by a margin of 26,414 votes.
Significantly, the BSP’s Balram Saini won the Moradabad seat by a margin of 17,635 votes, while Mahesh Verma bagged the Vidhuna seat with a clear margin of 7,349 votes.
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