Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won all the eight assembly seats in Lakhimpur Kheri district giving shocking defeats to the candidates of the Samajwadi party where eight people, including four protesting farmers, died after allegedly being mowed down by an SUV in which Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni's son Ashish Mishra is a prime accused.
BJP candidate from Nighasan, where the Lakhimpur Kheri violence had taken place in October, won with a huge margin.
Eight Assembly seats in the district Mohammadi, Gola Gokarannath, Kasta, Lakhimpur, Srinagar, Nighasan, Dhaurahara, and Palia Kalan have overwhelmingly voted for the BJP.
BJP's Lokendra Pratap Singh secured a win against Samajwadi Party's Daud Ahmad with a margin of 4871 votes in Mohammadi.
From Gola Gokarannath BJP candidate Arvind Giri has won by a margin vote of 29294 against SP's Vinay Tiwari. BJP candidate Saurabh Singh won Kasta seat against SP's Suneel Kumar Lala with a margin of 13817 votes. In Lakhimpur SP candidate Utkarsh Verma Madhur lost to BJP's Yogesh Verma with a margin of 20578 votes.
Manju Tyagi of BJP, who fought against SP's Ram Sharan won by a margin of 17608 votes in Sri Nagar. In Nighasan BJP's Shashank Verma won by 41009 votes, BJP's Vinod Shankar won by a margin of 24610 votes in Dhaurahara. In Palia Kalan SP's Pritinder Singh Kakku lost to Harvinder Kumar Sahni alias Romi Sahni of BJP by 38129 votes.
The opposition parties including Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress joined forces against the BJP as the Lakhimpur Kheri violence incident took place at a time when farmers' agitation was at the peak in the country.
Now scrapped farm laws and the perceived anger among the electorally influential 'Jat' community had led many political experts to believe that the BJP could suffer a serious dent in the UP polls, especially in the western region but the results indicated otherwise.
On October 3, eight people, including four protesting farmers, died after allegedly being mowed down by an SUV belonging to Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni's son Ashish Mishra. A local journalist was also killed in the violence.
The incident hit national and international dailies. Ashish Mishra was arrested and was in jail. Allahabad High Court recently granted bail to Ashish Mishra in Lakhimpur Kheri violence.
Bharatiya Janata Party's Yogesh Verma had won the Lakhimpur seat in the 2017 Assembly polls by defeating Samajwadi Party's Utkarsh Verma Madhur with a formidable margin of more than 37,000 votes.
The prestige of the Union Minister of State for the Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni was also at stake in the Lakhimpur Kheri constituency. He's a local MP, besides having been at the centre of controversy after his son was named in the FIR in the incident leading to the deaths of the farmers.
Interestingly, both the BJP and the SP have repeated their candidates.
Since the 1977 election, the SP has won the polls here four times whereas the BJP has won thrice.
( With inputs from ANI )
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