The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party retained the Gola Gokarannath assembly seat in Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh by emerging victorious in the bypoll. The counting of votes was held on Sunday.
Aman Giri, the BJP candidate and a political greenhorn, defeated his nearest rival and Samajwadi Party candidate Vinay Tiwari by a margin of 34,298 votes.
Aman, 26, defeated former MLA Vinay Tiwari, 52, with a bigger margin in comparison to the UP Assembly elections in which his father Arvind Giri had drubbed the SP leader with a margin of 29,294 votes. In the UP Assembly elections held in February-March this year, Arvind Giri had polled 48.67 per cent votes against Tiwari’s 37.4 per cent.
The Gola Gokarannath assembly bypoll was held after it fell vacant following the death of Arvind Giri, 65, after a cardiac arrest in September. The BJP tried to cash in on the sympathy factor and fielded Arvind’s son Aman who contested his first election.
After 32 rounds of counting, Aman emerged the winner as he secured 1.24 lakh votes (55.88 per cent vote share) and Tiwari bagged 90,512 votes (40.52 per cent vote share). As many as 1,771 voters opted for the NOTA choice in the Gola Gokarannath assembly bypoll held on November 3.
There were seven candidates who contested the bypoll. The Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress did not contest the bypoll in Gola Gokarannath.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who had addressed a public meeting in support of Aman Giri, tweeted that the BJP’s spectacular victory was a symbol of unwavering public trust in the double-engine government’s public welfare policies.
The SP, in a tweet, said the result was the defeat of the people of Gola Gokarannath and not of the SP. It alleged the BJP had misused administrative machinery and that the Election Commission of India (ECI) behaved like Dhritarashtra, a character from the epic Mahabharat. It also accused the BJP of harassing SP workers and using money power and said the BSP motivated its voters to vote for the ruling party in the state.