The BSP failed to win a single seat in Uttar Pradesh but managed to split the votes of top-of-the-table parties, aiding mostly the BJP and robbing the Samajwadi Party of an even better performance in the state.

There are 14 Lok Sabha seats where the BSP candidates got more votes than the victory margin of the BJP. The seat share of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh would have come down to 19 instead of 33 if the BSP was not in the fray.

It is a reminder of BSP chief Mayawati’s pledge after the 2019 parliamentary elections that her party would “contest to defeat the SP in future”.

However, unprecedented anger among voters against the Narendra Modi government saved the INDIA bloc by giving 37 seats to the SP, six to the Congress and one to the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram).

Arun Govil of the BJP, who was projected in Meerut as a “representative of Lord Ram” because he had played Ram’s role in the TV series Ramayan in 1987, was losing the poll till early Tuesday afternoon but by the end of the day he won by a margin of 10,585 votes against Sunita Verma of the SP. Devvart Kumar Tyagi of the BSP, who got 87,025 votes, played a huge factor in Govil’s victory.

In Akbarpur, Rajaram Pal of the SP lost by 44,345 votes against the BJP’s Devendra Singh. The BSP’s Rajesh Kumar Dwivedi got 73,140 votes.

In Aligarh, Satish Gautam of the BJP won by a margin of 15,647 votes against Bijendra Singh of the SP. The BSP’s Hitendra Kumar Upadhyay got 1,23,929 votes.

In Amroha, the BJP’s Kanwar Singh Tanwar won against the SP’s Danish Ali by 28,670 votes and the BSP’s Mujahid Husain got 1,64,099 votes.

In Farrukhabad, Naval Kishore Shakya of the SP lost to Mukesh Rajput of the BJP by 2,698 votes. The BSP’s Kranti Pandey got 45,390 votes.

The SP’s Amarnath Singh would have won in Phulpur if the BSP’s Jagannath Pal had not secured 82,586 votes. The BJP’s Praveen Patel emerged victorious in the constituency by a margin of 4,332 votes.

Again, Dod Ram Verma of the BSP got 91,710 votes and Jyotsana Gond of the SP lost by 55,379 votes against the BJP’s Arun Kumar Sagar in Shahjahanpur.

Sachchidanand Sakshi Maharaj of the BJP won by a margin of 35,818 votes in Unnao. Annu Tandon of the SP would have won if Ashok Kumar Pandey of the BSP, who got 72,527 votes, was not in the fray to split the INDIA bloc’s votes.

Bhimrao Ambedkar of the BSP got 1,22,629 votes in Hardoi and it was more than the victory margin of 27,856 of the BJP’s Jai Prakash against the SP’s Usha Verma.

In Bansgaon, Kamlesh Paswan of the BJP won by a margin of 3,150 votes against the SP’s Sadal Prasad. The BSP’s Ram Samujh garnered 64,750 votes.

B.R. Ahirwar of the BSP got 1,11,945 votes in Misrikh, which was more than the victory margin of the BJP’s Ashok Kumar Rawat (33,406) against Sangita Rajvanshi of the SP.

Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal (S), an ally of the BJP, won by 37,810 votes against the SP’s Ramesh Chand Bind because Manish Kumar of the BSP secured 1,44,446 votes.

Deepak of the SP lost by 37,508 votes against the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Chandan Chauhan in Bijnor, where the BSP’s Vijendra Singh bagged 2,18,986 votes. The RLD is an ally of the BJP.

The other allies of the INDIA bloc also faced defeat in some seats because the BSP split the non-BJP votes. Laliteshpati Tripathi of the Trinamool Congress lost to the BJP’s Vinod Kumar Bind by 44,072 votes in Bhadohi. The BSP’s Hari Shankar got 1,55,053 votes there.

Ironically, there are six seats where the BSP was instrumental in the defeat of the BJP.

A source in the BSP said: “The question was raised before Mayawati that we were harming other candidates by contesting alone instead of trying to win.
But Mayawati said that the BSP was a political party and it has to contest anyway.”