Dedicating the victory of Bharatiya Janata Party to its Shakti Kendras in Azamgarh and Rampur parliamentary by-elections, the state unit of the party has decided to strengthen these centres across the state.
“The bye-election results are a clear indication of the success of the Shakti centres. The party workers were able to meet people and convince them about the programmes of the Central and the state governments,” BJP vice-president Vijay Bahadur Pathak said.
He said that these centres were the focal point of the party at the ground level where the leaders apprised the voters about the policies of the government and motivated them to cast their votes.
“During this election, the workers went to over one lakh Shakti Kendras each in Azamgarh and Rampur constituencies,” he said and added that the Shakti Kendras would be strengthened for the 2024 general election.
Pathak said it was time for introspection for Akhilesh Yadav because it was the fourth election the party had lost under his leadership.
“The SP has reached its lowest number in Lok Sabha after this result. It now has three members in the lower House of Parliament,” the BJP leader said.
BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ won the parliamentary bypoll from Azamgarh and Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi from Rampur, defeating Samajwadi Party’s candidates Dharmendra Yadav and Asim Raja by margins of 8,679 and 42,192 votes, respectively.
Lodhi, an Other Backward Class candidate, is a former SP MLC. He had started his political career with the BJP but he switched sides later. He had contested the Lok Sabha election from Rampur as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate in 2009 but finished third. He was elected to UP Legislative Council from the Rampur-Bareilly local bodies constituency in 2016 as an SP candidate. His term ended in March this year.
The Azamgarh seat saw a triangular contest between BJP's Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirahua', SP's Dharmendra Yadav and BSP's Shah Alam while in Rampur, the contest was between BJP and SP because the BSP had not fielded a candidate from there.
Azamgarh was the SP bastion as Mulayam Singh Yadav won the Lok Sabha elections from Azamgarh in 2014 and in 2019 also Akhilesh won comfortably from there. In the by-election the SP had fielded Akhilesh’s cousin Dharmendra Yadav.
Mohammad Azam Khan had won from Rampur in the Lok Sabha election in 2019 when the SP had an alliance with the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. In 2014, BJP’s Nepal Singh, a Lodhi, had won the Rampur seat but with a thin margin.
