JOIN USRiding the ‘Modi ‘wave’, the BJP registered its best ever performance in Uttar Pradesh winning 71 of the 80 seats in the state and decimating the Samajwadi Party (SP), BSP and the Congress in the Hindi heartland. The BJP’s ally, Apna Dal, won two seats.
The BJP had won only 10 seats in the state in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls in the state.
The saffron tsunami washed out its rivals in almost every part of the state – from Ghaziabad in the west to Chandauli in the east – as the BJP made inroads into the bastions of the Congress, BSP, RLD and the SP.
BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat comfortably, defeating his nearest Aam Admi Party (AAP) rival Arvind Kejriwal. BJP chief Rajnath Singh also won from the Lucknow seat defeating his Congress rival Reeta Bahuguna Joshi. Senior BJP leaders Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and Kalraj Mishra also emerged victorious.
BSP supremo Mayawati suffered the biggest humiliation of her life when her party failed to open its account in the state. The BSP, which had 19 seats in the outgoing Lok Sabha from UP, suffered a severe drubbing even in its Dalit bastions.
The ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) received a big jolt and watched its tally coming down from 22 in 2009 to just five. The SP barely managed to save its traditional strongholds of Mainpuri and Budaon and Kannauj but lost Etawah, the home district of party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. Mulayam, who contested from two seats, won Mainpuri comfortably but was made to sweat at Azamgarh.
The Congress too got a drubbing and its influence has been literally confined to the Nehru-Gandhi family turf of Raebareli and Amethi. While the party chief Sonia Gandhi won Raebareli by a big margin, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi barely managed to win Amethi.
The Congress, which had 22 seats in the outgoing Lok Sabha from UP, saw all its ministers biting the dust at the hustings with some even finishing a poor third or fourth. Union ministers Sriprakash Jaiswal, Jitin Prasada, Pradeep Jain Aditya and R P N.Singh have lost miserably.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which had entered into an electoral alliance with the Congress, drew a blank and its chief Ajit Singh lost Baghpat, his home turf, to former Mumbai Police commissioner Satyapal Singh. Ajit’s son Jayanat Chaudhary also lost in Mathura to BJP nominee and film actors Hema Malini. The RLD’s Jaya Prada and Amar Singh also lost.
The AAP, which had put up its candidates in almost all the seats in the state, too drew a blank with even its top leaders including Arvind Kejriwal and Shazia Ilmi biting the dust.