Lucknow: A day after losing the Gorakhpur and Phulpur by-elections, UP CM Yogi Adityanath has cancelled all his engagements scheduled for Thursday and called for meetings with officials instead.
The Gorakhpur seat was held by Yogi for five terms before he vacated it to move to the UP Legislative assembly. The same route was taken by deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, who became the first BJP leader to win from the seat during the 2017 assembly elections.
CM Yogi was scheduled to take part in the Lok Kala Mahotsav in Gonda and inaugurate a statue of former Rajya Sabha MP and RSS veteran Nanaji Deshmukh.
Sources told News18 that Yogi after meeting with officials would also hold interactions with party workers, leaders to discuss Rajya Sabha Polls. The CM had blamed the BJP’s overconfidence and failure to realise the importance of BSP’s support to SP candidate as the main reason for the debacle.
“When the candidates were declared, the SP, BSP and Congress were not together... they had not joined hands then. But suddenly in the run-up to the election, the SP and BSP forged an electoral understanding,” he said.
In Phulpur, SP’s Nagendra Singh Patel defeated BJP's Kashlendra Singh Patel by over 59,000 votes. While in Gorakhpur, Pravin Nishad of the Samajwadi Party won by over 21,961 votes, defeating BJP candidate Upendra Dutt Shukla.
Accepting the by-election results, CM Yogi termed the SP-BSP alliance a “selfish deal” that would only create hurdles for the nation’s development. The leader, though, denied that the result was a mandate against the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, asserting that the bypolls were contested on local issues.
The loss in the by-election is a major embarrassment for Adityanath as the Gorakhpur seat was considered to be a BJP stronghold. He had been a five-time parliamentarian from the constituency, and before him, the town had sent his mentor Yogi Avaidyanath to the Lok Sabha three times.
Comments
0 comment