Uttar Pradesh Assembly election results 2017: A historic landslide for BJP

Lucknow: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday won by a landslide in Uttar Pradesh, leading on 321 of the 403 seats in the state, with trends for all seats in.

A two-thirds majority for BJP in the state, where Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had claimed that the SP-Congress alliance would win 300 seats, is seen as a pointer towards the outcome of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. However, the BJP looks set to finish with as many as four-fifths of the seats in the state.

Read: LIVE Assembly election results 2017: BJP sweeps UP, U’khand; Cong returns in Punjab

BJP thus gained its largest ever majority in UP, comfortably overtaking the 221 seats Kalyan Singh won in 1991 during the height of the Ram Mandir agitation.

Meanwhile, the much-touted Samajwadi Party- Congress alliance led by Rahul Gandhi and UP CM Akhilesh Yadav was nowhere in the race, leading on less than 60 seats.

In a press conference following the BJP's stunning win in UP, its national president Amit Shah said that the saffron party would form the government in 4 states - Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa.

The BJP president called the victory in UP the biggest victory by any party after Independence.

Amit Shah also hailed Modi as the most popular leader the country had seen after Independence. "The public has restored the same faith it put in the BJP and Narendra Modi during the 2014 polls," Shah claimed.

The BJP president said the people had embraced the 'politics of performance', casting aside dynasty politics in the state of UP and in the country.

Shah announced that the BJP would felicitate Modi on Sunday evening to mark the astounding performance under his leadership.

However, he refused to divulge as to who would become the new Chief Minister of the state, saying the party would take a decision in the matter.

Conceding defeat, outgoing UP CM Akhilesh Yadav congratulated the BJP on its resounding victory.

Perhaps in a sarcastic vein, he said the BJP government would now build better roads and infrastructure than he had as the CM. 

Stating that the people's mandate had to be respected, Akhilesh however backed Mayawati's assertion that the EVMs had been tampered with, adding that a probe should be conducted.

The UP CM claimed that perhaps, the people of UP had voted for BJP due to the bullet trains it had promised. Countering a questioner on the poor state of law and order in the state, Akhilesh said the police in UP were usually the quickest to respond to incidents of crime. He asserted that BJP had won the election by communal polarisation.

"Hamari cycle ke tube main hawan hi nahi thi (The SP cycle was deflated, its tubes had no air)," quipped Akhilesh.

After the press conference, Akhilesh Yadav proceeded to Governor Ram Naik's residence and submitted his resignation.

Fate of Important candidates

After falling out with his nephew Akhilesh, SP leader and minister Shivpal Yadav was in a tough see-saw battle with Manish Yadav Batre of the BJP in Jaswant Nagar of Etawah. Eventually though, Shivpal defeated the BJP candidate by 52,616 votes.

Read: LIVE Manipur Assembly election results 2017: BJP, Congress in tight race

Home Minister Rajnath Singh's son Pankaj Singh won from Noida, and his victory was part of a landslide in eastern UP which saw BJP win all 8 seats in Noida and Ghaziabad.

Tainted minister Gayatri Prajapati, who is absconding after the UP Police booked him in an alleged gangrape case and attempt to rape a minor, lost in Amethi.

He was pitted against Garima Singh (BJP), the first wife of Congress leader Sanjay Singh, and Ameeta Singh (Congress) – his present wife. Singh went on to win the constituency.

Read: LIVE Uttarakhand Assembly election results 2017: Congress wiped out

But Samajwadi Party received a major jolt from Lucknow Cantt seat, where its patron Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav lost to BJP's Rita Bahuguna Joshi. Joshi won by a margin of 33,796 votes in the seat.

While Reeta Joshi secured 95,402 votes, Aparna got only 61,606 votes and stood in the second place while the BSP's Yogesh Dixit got 26,036 votes.

Besides Mulayam, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, his wife Dimple Yadav had also campaigned on this seat for Aparna but all their efforts went in vain with people selecting the BJP candidate.

BSP candidate and gangster-turned politician Mukhtar Ansari, who joined the BSP in January after falling out with Akhilesh Yadav, however won from Mau by a massive 97,199 votes.

Swati Singh, the wife of expelled BJP leader Dayashankar Singh, won from the Sarojini Nagar seat.

Communally sensitive Ayodhya, long a BJP bastion, saw a see-saw battle between BJP's Ved Prakash Gupta and SP's Tej Narayan Pandey. However, in the end, Gupta won by a margin of over 49,000 votes.

UP Minister Rahguraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya won in Kunda.

Read: LIVE Punjab Assembly election results 2017: Captain leads Congress victory

Azam Khan won in Rampur, while his son Abdullah won from Swar Tanda seat.

BJP workers across the state began celebrating even as the early trends showed the saffron party taking a comfortable lead.

"We respect the mandate, but development has lost and votebank politics has won," Congress leader Rajiv Shukla said reacting to the result.

But it was Mayawati who was most anguished over the results. The BSP was leading in just 18 seats with leads for all 403 seats available. Subsequently, the BSP chief alleged tampering with EVM machines.

“Either the EVMs did not accept votes other than for BJP, or the votes of other parties have gone to BJP in the EVMs,” Mayawati said in a press conference immediately following the results.

“The BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate. Yet, most votes in Muslim majority constituencies have gone to BJP. This makes it evident that voting machines were manipulated,” she claimed.

“I have written to Election Commission in this regard. People no longer have faith in EVM machines,” Mayawati alleged.

Mayawati challenged PM Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah to once again conduct the election on a paper ballot if they were so sure of their victory.

The results were a complete shift from the results of the 2012 polls, where the BJP had come a cropper with just 47 seats, and the SP had stormed to power with 224. The BSP had won 80 seats in 2012.

Uttar Pradesh had witnessed seven-phase polling that started on February 11 and ended on March 8.

Two out of four exit polls this time had showed a near-majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Assembly elections, and Today's Chanakya predicted an over two-thirds majority on Thursday.

Only two polls showed a neck-and-neck fight between BJP and the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance.

In 2012, the Samajwadi Party swept to power defeating incumbent chief minister Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party which had got an absolute majority in the previous elections.

SP had won 224 seats of the 401 it contested in 2012, garnering a vote share of 29.15 per cent with an upswing of 3.72 per cent over the last elections.

The BSP had got 80 seats with a 25.91 per cent vote share. The BJP managed 47 seats with 15 per cent vote share, while the Congress got 28 seats with 11.63 per cent vote share.

In the 2014 general elections, however, the BJP captured Uttar Pradesh, winning 71 of the 80 parliamentary seats. It got a vote share of 42.30 per cent. The SP managed only 5 seats with a vote share of 22.2 per cent, the Congress and Apna Dal got 2 seats each while Mayawati was left high and dry.