Veterans cautious on Samajwadi Party performance in UP bypolls

Lucknow (IANS) Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav may be elated over his party's victory in the recent by-elections, but party veterans feel that the poor margin of victory is no cause for celebrations.

"It was merely a coincidence and a combination of factors that led to our victory in three Assembly segments. On this basis, we certainly cannot aim for a comeback in the 2022 Assembly polls," said a party veteran who has been pushed into semi-retirement.

The leader said that on the Rampur seat, SP candidate Tanzeen Fatima had won with a margin of 7,589 votes, whereas Mohd Azam Khan had won the same seat with a margin of 1, 02,100 votes in 2017.

Azam Khan is facing 84 criminal cases against him and his family had managed to create a sympathy wave in favour of his wife Tanzeen Fatima, with his highly emotional speeches. Akhilesh Yadav had also campaigned on this seat.

"With all these efforts, the SP won with a narrow margin, which indicates that there is no wave in our favour," the party leader said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had got merely 25.8 per cent votes in 2017 in Rampur, but this time, the party has got 44.4 per cent votes which is an increase of almost 20 per cent.

On the Zaidpur Assembly seats, the SP candidate Gaurav Rawat won with a margin of 4,165 votes with the BJP coming a close second.

Similarly, in Jalalpur, SP's Subhash Rai won with a margin of 776 votes over the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) candidate Chhaya Varma. The SP and BSP, both, got 35 per cent votes each.

Political analyst Rajiv Srivastava said: "When Assembly elections are still two and a half years away, these by-elections cannot be termed as a semi-final of sorts. The SP has a reason to be happy, but should not be over confident with these results which seem to be an outcome of local equations rather than in favour of the party."