Lucknow (TIP)-The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Thursday, December 8,  won the by-election from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency, retaining the legacy seat of its founder Mulayam Singh Yadav, while the BJP secured the Rampur assembly constituency, a long-time stronghold of former state minister Azam Khan, for the first time.

The saffron party, however, received a setback in the Khatauli assembly seat that went to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), an SP ally. In Mainpuri, SP candidate Dimple Yadav, Mulayam’s daughter-in-law, won by 2.88 lakh votes, three times the party patriarch’s victory margin in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he secured the seat for the fifth time. While the bypoll to the Mainpuri parliamentary seat was necessitated by Mulayam’s death in October, the disqualification of SP’s Azam Khan and BJP’s Vikram Singh Saini as MLAs from Rampur and Khatauli led to the by-elections on these two assembly seats. Azam lost his Assembly membership from Rampur, which he won in 2022 for 10th time, following his conviction in a hate speech case.

Dimple led in all the five assembly segments, including the Lodh-dominated Bhongaon where Mulayam lagged behind by 25,510 votes in 2019. The Lodhs are largely BJP supporters. Dimple bagged 6.18 lakh votes (64 per cent) followed by BJP’s Raghuraj Singh Shakya (3.29 lakh) and NOTA (6,125). The BJP’s vote share declined in the by-poll in comparison to 2019 when its candidate Prem Singh Shakya had got 4.30 lakh votes (44 per cent). But the BJP replaced Prem Singh Shakya with Raghuraj Singh Shakya, a former two-time SP MP.

In Rampur, BJP’s Akash Saxena defeated SP’s Asim Raja with a margin of 34,136 votes by getting 62 per cent of votes. In the 2022 assembly polls, Azam had defeated Saxena with a margin of 55,141 votes .

The SP is attributing the low turnout of Muslim voters as the main factor behind its defeat in the constituency that the community comprises 56 per cent of the total electorate.

Raja’s defeat is a setback for Azam, his political mentor. In the Rampur Lok Sabha elections in June this year, Azam got SP ticket for Raja who had lost the seat to the BJP. The Lok Sabha by-poll was held as Azam had resigned as MP after he was elected to the Assembly. The Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), an SP ally in the 2022 assembly polls, got only 169 votes, behind 726 NOTA votes.

The BJP for the first time tried to woo Muslims by reaching out to the community by deploying Pasmanda Muslims among others. “That tactic did not work much. But the BJP got majority of the Dalit votes in Rampur in the absence of the BSP and that helped in win,” said a party leader.

In the Khatauli assembly constituency (Muzaffaranagar district), RLD candidate Madan Bhaiyya defeated BJP’s Rajkumari by a margin of 22,143 votes. While Bhaiyya got 54 per cent of the total votes, Rajkumari polled 41.72 per cent.

In 2022, Rajkumari’s husband Vikram Singh Saini had won the seat for second consecutive term after getting 45.34 per cent vote whereas RLD got 38 per cent votes. Vikram was disqualified as MLA after his conviction in a case related to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Source:      The Indian Express