Keeping in with the nationwide trend, `lotus’ bloom in Uttar Pradesh dubbing a humiliating defeat of all the central and state ministers, president of Aam Adami Party (AAP), Arvind Kejriwal, Rastriya lok Dal (RlD) chief Ajit Singh and Speaker in State Assembly, Mata Prasad Pande. The only consolation for Congress and Samajwadi Party is that there first families managed to retain their seats but for Bahujan Samaj Party, it was almost complete wipe out.
The storm of Bharatiya Janta Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, which turned into `Tsunami’ by the end of elections has washed out almost entire opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh which sent maximum 80 MPs. UP created history for Bharatiya Janta Party facilitating Gujrat chief minister to come to power with a record majority after three decades. last time, it was Rajeev Gandhi, who riding high on `Sympathy’ wave after his mother Indira Ghandhi’s assisnation made a similar record in 1984. Modi’s storm also posed a big threat for existence of regional parties, mainly Bahujan Samaj Party as Samajwadi Party, whose traditional vote banks has shifted towards BJP for the first time. The results also pointed towards huge polarisation in BJP’s favour as not a single candidate of Muslim made it to Parliament from UP this time. It may be mentioned that BJP not fielded any Muslim candidate and even Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who used to fight from Rampur, has been also denied ticket.
The important candidates of Opposition parties who successfully sailed through despite Modi’s Tsunami is Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, who defeated BJP’s candidate Ajay Agarwal by more than 3.52 lakh votes. Her son Rahul Gandhi, who initially trailed behind BJP’s Smriti Irani, had managed to establish a comfortable lead of over 78,000 votes when the reports last came in.
Amogst the candidates of Samajwadi Party, the Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, is sitting safe in Mainpuri seat where he established a huge margin of over 3.65 lakh vote over BJP’s Shatrughan Singh. In Azamgarh, he was ahead of BJP’s Ramakant Yadav with over 63,000 votes. Mulayam’s daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav, however, is engaged in a very close fight with BJP’s Subrat Pathak. In Badaun, Mulayam’s nephew Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav in Ferojabad had also established a sound margin though the results are yet to be declared.
Amongst the prominent candidates of Congress who felt the anger of the public included all the six ministers, Shree Prakash Jaiswal (Kanpur), Salman Khursheed (Farukabad), Beni Prasad Verma (Gonda), RPN Singh (Gonda), Pradeep Jain `Aditya’ (Jhansi), Jitin Prasad (Dauraura) and Pl Puniya (Barabanki), who enjoyed minister rank along with UPCC, president Nirmal Khatri. Similarly, amongst 22 MPs of Congress, only Sonia and Rahul could made it to Parliament. In SP camp also, Speaker in state Assembly, Mata Prasad Pande (Domriyaganj), ministers in Akhilesh’s government Kailash Chaurasiya (Varanasi), Narendra Bhati, enjoying minister rank (Ghaziabad) were defeated. BSP, witnessed a compete rout as all it’s 19 sitting MPs faced defeat. Similarly for RlD also, it’s president, Ajit Singh, along with his son Jayant Chowdhary both lost elections along with other prominent leaders like Amar Singh and Jaya Parda.
BJP which swept the entire state facilitated a comfortable win for all it’s senior leaders which included prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi (Varanasi), national president, Rajnath Singh (lucknow), Murli Manohar Joshi (Kanpur), Menaka Gandhi (Philibhit), Varun Gandhi (Sultanpur), Uma Bharti (Jhansi), retired army chief, VK Singh (Ghaziabad), Dr Satya Pal Singh, who resigned a police commissioner of Mumbai to join BJP from Bagpat, film actress Hema Malini from Mathura, Santosh Gangwar (Bareilly), Kalraj Mishra (Deoria), lallu Singh (Ayodhya), Kirti Wardhan Singh from Gonda, and Yogi Adityanath (Gorakhpur). Apna Dal chief, Anupriya Patel, who made seat adjustments with BJP comfortably won Mirjapur seat while her Party candidate, Kunwar Harwansh Singh, rested Pratapgarh seat.