A day after the results of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections came in favour of the Bhartiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav thanked the people of UP for giving his party two and a half times more seats than 2017 polls and an increased voting percentage.
In a tweet, the former UP CM wrote, “Heartfelt thanks to the people of UP for increasing our seats by two and a half times and vote percentage by one and a half times! We have shown that BJP seats can be reduced. This decline of BJP will continue. More than half the confusion and delusion has been cleared, the rest will happen in a few days. The struggle will continue in public interest.”
On Thursday, after the results of the polls were out, the incumbent BJP and its alliances won 273 seats, while Samajwadi Party, the main challenger, could win only 125 seats. The tally of SP rose from 47 seats in 2017 to 125 in 2022, while the tally of BJP declined from 326 to 273 seats.
Back in 2012 UP assembly polls, the Samajwadi Party had contested on 401 seats and bagged 29.13 percent votes along with 224 seats. It was only after this election that the SP formed a majority government on its own in the state for the first time. After this, the SP contested the 2017 elections in alliance with the Congress. The SP had fielded candidates on 311 seats and had got 21.82 percent votes, winning just 47 seats. This time, the voteshare of the SP has increased, but the party has failed to cross the magic figure of 202 seats in UP Assembly.
This time, the Yadav-led SP had extensively campaigned against the policies of Yogi Adityanath’s government. The party had chosen smaller parties for alliances.
The SP had also forged an alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal in the Western part of the state in an attempt to capitalise on the public anger created by the farmers’ movement. The party had also banked upon issues like inflation, stray cattle, old pension and unemployment. But it seems that these issues failed to work for the Samajwadi Party this time.
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