By-poll Results: Samajwadi Party Wrests BJP Seats in UP, Wins On PM Modi's Turf

Lucknow: A day after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav tweeted about "drawing inspiration for 2017, no matter what the outcome" of by-polls in the state, his Samajwadi Party was heartened by big gains at the cost of the BJP. (Track Live Updates)

The Samajwadi Party wrested eight of 11 assembly seats vacated by the BJP, among them Rohaniya, which is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi and contributed to his massive victory margin of over three lakh votes.

"The people of UP have rejected communal forces," said an upbeat Akhilesh Yadav. (Setback for BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan)

Senior BJP leader and Union minister Uma Bharti said the "Modi wave" was definitely not dead, but said "state worker and leaders need to introspect." The BJP has also lost Charkhari vacated by Ms Bharti.

In the national election, BJP won a spectacular 71 of the state's 80 Lok Sabha seats, leaving just five for the Samajwadi Party and two for the Congress. The party credited its victory to its master strategist Amit Shah, who was rewarded with the post of BJP president in July. (Also Read: BJP Makes a Debut in Mamata Banerjee's West Bengal)

A post-mortem of the BJP's performance may suggest that the focus on "Love Jihad" came a cropper.

The BJP lost five seats in places where its MP Yogi Adityanath campaigned and made controversial references to "Love Jihad" - a term used by rightwing groups to describe what they believe is an Islamist strategy to seduce and convert Hindu women.

The BJP dropped the term "love jihad" from a political resolution while adopting forced conversions as an agenda for the by-polls, but made no apparent move to rein in the firebrand saffron-robed Adityanath, which led to critics accusing the party of leaning on the "Love jihad" campaign to polarize voters.

Adityanath, however, blamed other factors. "There has to be an analysis of how tickets were distributed. I was not allowed to campaign everywhere. We won wherever I went," he claimed.

The absence of Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party from the by-poll contests also seems to have hit the BJP, as there was no split in the votes against it. (Also Read: Congress Makes a Comeback in Vasundhara Raje's Rajasthan Too)