It's all in the family

It is all in the family – when it comes to winning a poll. This seems to be true for the Samajwadi Party and Congress as only the members of Yadav family and Gandhi family have been able to withstand the Bharatiya Janata Party onslaught in Uttar Pradesh.

The Samajwadi Party has won five seats and the Congress only two.The Congress has retained the Rae Bareli lok Sabha seat of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who defeated Supreme Court lawyer Ajay Agarwal by a margin of over 3.50 lakh votes. In Amethi, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi defeated BJP’s Smriti Irani by a margin of around 80,000 votes.

Barring the mother-son duo, all the Congress candidates lost their elections.The same is the case with Samajwadi Party which saw only five of its candidates winning the election – all members of the Yadav clan. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is also national president of Samajwadi Party, won from Azamgarh in eastern UP and Mainpuri in central-west UP. His nephew Dharmendra Yadav won from Budaun where he defeated Yagnish Pathak of BJP.

Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in law and wife of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Dimple Yadav, retained her Kannauj seat, defeating BJP’s Subhrata Pathak by a narrow margin.  

Party’s general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav’s son Akshay Yadav, who made his electoral entry this time from Firozabad, defeated seasoned and former MP SPS Baghel.The SP supremo  Barring the members of the Yadav family, all other candidates of Samajwadi Party lost the election.while the SP has retained Mainpuri, Budaun and Kannauj seats, it wrested Azamgarh and Firozabad from BJP and Congress respectively.