UP Assembly Elections: Margin of victory less than 500 votes in 11 seats!

Image Courtesy:ibtimes.co.in

The Uttar Pradesh Elections are over and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has managed to retain the state, albeit with fewer seats this time. As opposed to the 2017 victory where they won over 320 seats, this time the BJP could only get 255 seats, because the Samajwadi Party (SP) managed to bounce back. In 2017, the SP was reduced to less than 50 seats, but in 2022, they managed to win 111.

As far as vote share goes, the BJP has managed to corner 41.29 percent of the total votes cast, but the SP too managed an impressive 32.06 percent. But many of the seats were won by a margin of less than 5,000 votes, some be even fewer than 500 votes!

A closer look at the figures reveals that BJP won half of these close contests, winning 26 of the 52 seats where the margin of victory was less than 5,000 votes. In fact, it won 7 out of the 11 seats where margin of victory was less than 500 votes.

Here’s a table that showcases the 52 constituencies, their winners and runners up:

Victory margin of less than 500 votes

The thinnest margin of votes was seen in Dhampur, where Ashok Kumar Rana of the BJP beat the SP’s Naim Ul Hassan by just 203 votes! Some other instances where candidates won by a margin of less than 500 votes are:

• Kursi, where BJP’s Sakendra Pratap defeated SP’s RK Verma by 217 votes

• Chandpur, where SP’s Swamy Omvesh defeated BJP’s Kamlesh Saini by 234 votes

• Nehatur, where BJP’s Om kumar defeated Rashtriya Lok Dal’s (RDL) Munshiram by 258 votes

• Ram Nagar, where SP’s FM Kidwai defeated BJP’s SK Awasthi by 261 votes

• Isauli, where SP’s Mohammed Tahir Khan defeated BJP’s Om Prakash Pandey by 269 votes

• Bilaspur, where BJP’s Baldev Singh Aulakh defeated SP’s Amarjeet Singh by 307 votes

• Nakur, where BJP’s Mukesh Chaudhry defeated SP’s Dharam Singh Saini by 315 votes

• Baraut, where BJP’s KP Malik defeated RLD’s Jaiveer by 315 votes

• Katra, where BJP’s VK Singh defeated SP’s rajesh Yadav by 357 votes

• Dibiyapur, where SP’s PK Yadav defeated SP’s LS Rajpur by 473 votes

It is noteworthy, that in 7 out of the 11 instances, it was the BJP candidate who won.

Victory margin of 501 to 1,000 votes

Then there were constituencies where the victory margin was still slim, ranging between 501 and 1,000 votes. These are:

• Shahganj where Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hmara Aam Dal’s (NISHAD) Ramesh defeated SP’s Shailendra Yadav Lalai by w719 votes

• Domariyaganj where SP’s Sadiya Khatoon defeated BJP’s Raghvendra Singh Rathore by a margin of 771 votes

• Moradabad Nagar, where BJP’s Ritesh Kumar Gupta defeated SP’s Mohammed Yusuf Ansari by 782 votes

• Jasrana where SP’s Sachin Yadav defeated BJP’s Mahendra Pratap Singh by 836 votes

In two out of the four cases the winning candidate was from the SP.

Victory margin on 1,001 to 5,000 votes

These was the case in 37 constituencies. Out of these, 18 seats were won by the BJP, 15 by the SP, 3 by Apna Dal (Sonylal) and 1 by the Indian National Congress (INC). While the lowest margin here was a mere 1,009 in Sultanpur where BJP’s Vinod Singh defeated SP’s Anoop Sanda, the highest margin of victory in this bracket was recorded in Mohammdi, where BJP’s LP Singh defeated SP’s Daud Ahmed by 4,871 votes.

Conclusion

All of the above indicate that in many constituencies the candidates won by the skin of their teeth. Out of the 52 seats mentioned, the BJP won in 26 or exactly half the number of seats.

Moreover, the results could have been very different if strong pre-poll alliances had been put in place by like-minded parties, who would agree to only field candidates with the highest likelihood of victory from each constituency. This would have prevented the vote from splitting in many constituencies and the outcome of the election could have changed in at least some of the above 52 constituencies. Though one could argue that even those numbers would not have been sufficient for the SP to dethrone the BJP from UP.

Related:

UP Assembly Elections: Serial hate offender Raghvendra Pratap Singh gets the boot
Hate Offender Keshav Prasad Maurya emerges as one of the biggest losers
UP Assembly Elections: Lakhimpur Kheri witness allegedly attacked by BJP goons