The Samajwadi Party won pocket borough Mainpuri while its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal bagged Khatauli in Assembly by-elections, defying a BJP campaign blitzkrieg involving Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and over two-dozen cabinet colleagues.

The BJP, however, snatched Rampur from the Samajwadi Party in a bypoll necessitated by the disqualification and imprisonment of Azam Khan.

In Mainpuri, where a bypoll was necessitated by the death of Samajwadi patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, his daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav defeated the BJP’s Raghuraj Shakya by over 2.8 lakh votes.

In Khatauli, the RLD-SP candidate, Madan Bhaiya, beat the BJP’s Raj Kumari by over 20,000 votes. Akhilesh said: “It is only a small glimpse of what is going to happen in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh....”

A BJP leader in Lucknow said on the condition of anonymity: “It became clear today that the media, advertisements and poll management by government officers are not enough to win an election in the heartland state.

The entire team of senior ministers had been deployed and Adityanath himself had campaigned in Mainpuri, Khatauli and Rampur. However, we have got some respite in Rampur.”