Samajwadi Party retains Bhatpar Rani seat

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party on Thursday retained the Bhatpar Rani seat in Deoria with its candidate Ashutosh Updhyay emerging winner with a record margin. While the SP's victory was no surprise, what came as a shocker was the exceptionally poor show by the three major parties - Congress,BJP and BSP who even lost their fight for the second position to Sabha Kunwar of the Suhail Dev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SDBSP).
The seat fell vacant following the death of four-time MLA and sports minister in Akhilesh Yadav's cabinet Kameshwar Upadhyay in October 2012. With eyes on sympathy votes, the SP fielded his son Ashutosh Upadhyay. The move worked and Ashutosh won bagging 73,100 (45.04%) votes. BSP's Binda bagged 24,711 (15.23%) votes, while INC's Raghvendra Veer Vikram and BJP's Raj Kumar Shahi managed 10,361 (6.38 %) votes and 5,851 (3.61%) votes respectively. In sharp contrast to this, SDBSP's Sabha Kunwar got 38,998 (24.03%) votes.
For the SP, the Bhatpar Rani by-election result will serve as an example to back the party's claim that the Akhilesh Yadav government's popularity is on the rise in Uttar Pradesh.
The party had earlier faced embarrassment in the Mant bypoll, which were held after the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) general secretary Jayant Chaudhary vacated the seat and retained his Parliament membership. The seat was won by Shyam Sundar Sharma of the Trinamool Congress.
Meanwhile, alleging irregularities, BSP demanded cancellation of Bhatparrani bypoll. "We have asked the Election Commission that the by-election be cancelled and the entire process be held again under the supervision of officials other than those of the UP government, " BSP leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui.The BSP candidate Binda was a Congress candidate in the 2012 UP assembly polls and had secured the third position with 19,352 votes then. In the by-elections, he retained his third position, but with lesser votes. At the same time, the BSP candidate for the assembly polls - Sabha Kunwar - who contested from SDBSP this time, stood second securing a couple of thousand less votes as compared to his assembly poll tally. Political analysts insist that the bypolls have established the fact that changing political banners did not help any of the candidates at all.