Lucknow: Samajwadi Party candidate Pravin Kumar Nishad was on Wednesday elected to the Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, a seat vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, defeating the BJP’s Upendra Dutt Shukla by 21,881 votes, officials said.
The Samajwadi Party, backed by its otherwise bitter foe BSP, wrested the Phulpur Lok Sabha seat too.
Samajwadi Party candidate Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel defeated his nearest Bharatiya Janata Party rival Kaushlendra Singh Patel by 59,613 votes, leading to noisy celebrations and calls for opposition unity across the nation to defeat the BJP in next year’s Lok Sabha battle.
The results were announced after 31 rounds of counting.
The Bahujan Samaj Party had extended support to the Samajwadi Party in a bid to avoid a split in opposition vote.
Amid beating of drums and distribution of sweets, the victorious Nagendra Patel not only thanked the people of Phulpur for his victory but said he also had the blessings of ‘behenji’ Mayawati along with his own leader Akhilesh Yadav.
