UP, Bihar bypoll results: BJP loses Phulpur, trails heavily in Gorakhpur, Araria

Gorakhpur/Patna: Samajwadi Party defeated Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh's Phulpur seat and is heading towards achieving a milestone in the Gorakhpur seat as well. Samajwadi Party's Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel won Phulpur Lok Sabha seat by 59,613 votes.

After the defeat of BJP, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP leader Yogi Adityanath said, "We accept the verdict of the people, this result is unexpected, we will review the shortcomings. I congratulate the winning candidates." The Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats of Uttar Pradesh were vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya after their entry into the Assembly in April, 2017. Both seats were a status fight for the BJP.  Gorakhpur has been held by Yogi Adityanath since 1998 – he was the youngest MP at 26 – and three times before that by his mentor Advaidyanath. Phulpur is an extremely prominent Lok Sabha seat that the BJP had wrested only in 2014. It has been represented by Jawaharlal Nehru, his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit and also former Prime Minister V P Singh.  

The fate of the third parliamentary seat being called today is Araria in Bihar, where too the BJP is trailing, this time behind Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD. Counting for two Assembly seats in Bihar were also held today. BJP's Rinky Rani Pandey has won Bhabhua Assembly seat while the RJD has won the Jehanabad Assembly seat. Since there are no permanent enemies in politics, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have come together this time to stop the BJP.  The last time they joined hands was in 1992 -- to take charge of the state after the sacking of BJP’s Kalyan Singh in the aftermath of the Babri demolition.

SP's Praveen Kumar Nishad is leading in the Gorakhpur constituency with 377,146 votes after 25 rounds of counting. BJP's Upendra Dutt Shukla is second with 354,192 votes. In Bihar, after the 22nd round of counting, RJD is leading by 57,791 with 4,46,179 votes, while BJP is trailing with 3,88,388 votes for Araria constituency. The election were said to test the recently formed electoral arrangement between the two arch-rivals -- Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP). The two parties have come together in Phulpur and Gorakhpur for the first time after 1991 to take on the BJP.