Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati saw a bitter fallout after fighting Lok Sabha elections together in UP
The BJP has continued to impress in Uttar Pradesh, winning seven out of the 11 assembly seats that went to bypolls on Monday. It is down one seat from the 2017 assembly polls in the state, when the party had won eight of these 11 seats. The party's ally, the Apna Dal (Sonelal), has retained the one bypoll seat it won in the 2017 election.
But one contest that caught everyone's attention during counting of votes today was on the Jalalpur seat in UP's Ambedkar Nagar district. The seat, won by Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party in the 2017 assembly elections, saw a seesaw battle between her party's candidate and that of her former alliance partner Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party. Mr Yadav and Ms Mayawati saw a bitter fallout after fighting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections together in UP. Eventually, the Samajwadi Party candidate - Subhash Rai - defeated the BSP candidate by 790 votes.
In fact, within the opposition ranks, it is the Samajwadi Party that has emerged as the big gainer in the bypoll. In 2017, it held just one seat of these 11 that saw bypolls. Now, it has won three. The party has retained the Rampur assembly seat, won the Zaidpur assembly seat from the BJP and the Jalalpur assembly seat from Ms Mayawati's BSP.
The BSP is the big loser, going from holding one seat (Jalalpur) of these 11 from the 2017 elections to losing even this seat.
There was drama on the Gangoh seat in west UP that the BJP eventually retained - the Congress led on the seat for most part of the day before the last few rounds of counting turned the results in the BJP's favour.