Commenting for the first time since losing the 2022 UP assembly elections, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday said that the results have shown that the BJP is not unbeatable.
“We have shown that the BJP's seats can be reduced. The fall for the BJP will continue. Half of the misunderstanding has gone, the other half will go too,” the SP chief wrote on twitter.
He further said that his party increased its vote-share by 1.5 times and the assembly seats by 2.5 times and thanked the people of the state who voted for him.
“Our struggle for public welfare will continue,” he further wrote.
The 2022 UP assembly elections were critical given that it is the country’s most populous state, gives the maximum number of representatives (80) in Lok Sabha and the results will give a teaser of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
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UP CM Yogi Adityanath won a thumping majority. BJP won 255 seats out of total 403 by pulling 41.3 percent of votes. Its allies won 12 seats. Yogi Adityanath became the first sitting Chief Minister since 1985 to win consecutive terms.
On the other hand, SP won 111 votes after pulling 32.06 percent.
BJP along with its allies won 325 seats in 2017. This time, they won 273 in total. BJP’s vote share rose from 39.67 in 2017 percent to 41.29 percent in 2022.
SP and its allies won 125 seats in this election. In comparison, SP won 47 seats in the 2017 elections. Its vote share increased from 21.82 percent to 32.06 percent.
Another major state party, Bahujan Samaj Party, pulled just 12.84 percent of vote-share (second lowest ever since 1993 when it pulled 11.12 percent votes) and won just 1 seat. In the 2017 assembly elections, BSP won 19 seats with 22.23 percent votes.
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“BSP’s supporters, who are primarily upper caste Hindus and from several OBC communities, had a fear in them that if the SP came back to power, the state would be thrown back to the jungle raj and goonda raj of the past. Hence, they went ahead and voted for the BJP,” BSP Supremo Mayawati said on Friday explaining the party’s heavy defeat.
