SP-BJP Battle Of Prestige Ends With Rare — But Massive — Saffron Win In Milkipur

As of 2.50pm, after 25 of 30 rounds of counting, the BJP’s Chandrabhanu Paswan had over 1,26,000 votes against 69,156 for SP's Ajit Prasad. Both candidates belong to the Dalit Pasi community.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) was in for a setback on Saturday as its candidate for the Milkipur assembly bypoll — Ajit Prasad, the son of former MLA and now-MP Awadhesh Prasad — lost to the BJP by a margin of nearly 57,000 votes.

Part of the politically significant Ayodhya district, Milkipur was being keenly watched amid an intense battle of supremacy between the BJP and the SP in Uttar Pradesh. The election was important for the BJP because not only did it lose the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat — which covers the Ram temple and the Milkipur assembly seat — months after the Ram temple consecration, the defeat came at the hands of Prasad. The election was necessitated by Prasad’s shift to the Lok Sabha after winning the Faizabad parliamentary constituency in the 2024 election. In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Milkipur was the only seat the BJP lost in Ayodhya district.

For the SP, it was a battle of prestige after the BJP scored some reversals in the November 2024 assembly bypolls, where it won 6 of 9 seats, including SP stronghold Kundarki. The SP won 2 of these seats, with one going to BJP ally Rashtriya Lok Dal.

As of 2.50pm, after 25 of 30 rounds of counting in Milkipur, the BJP’s Chandrabhanu Paswan had over 1,26,000 votes against 69,156 for Ajit Prasad. Both candidates belong to the Dalit Pasi community.

Milkipur is a Scheduled-Caste-reserved seat. According to an Indian Express report, the seat has about 3.60 lakh voters, including 1.25 lakh Dalits (65,000-70,000 from Pasi community), 60,000-65,000 Brahmins, and 50,000-55,000 Yadavs. “The OBC communities like Chaurasiyas, Mauryas, Vishwakarmas and Chauhans account for about 30,000 voters, while Muslim and Thakur voters are 30,000 and 18,000, respectively,” the report notes.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav described the BJP’s win as a fake victory brought on by electoral malpractice. BJP MP Dinesh Sharma, meanwhile, told news agency ANI that the results symbolise a “breakdown of the Samajwadi Party’s arrogance”, referring to the party’s Lok Sabha election performance where it won the highest number of seats in UP.

High-Stakes Campaign

Before the election, the BJP had only won the seat once in over three decades, in 2017.

The campaign for the bypoll was supercharged and high-stakes, with both Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his predecessor Akhilesh Yadav of the SP hitting the campaign trail for their respective candidates. A Dalit woman’s murder in the run-up to the February 5 bypoll further heated up the battle. As Awadhesh Prasad broke down for “failing to protect the woman”, and vowed to resign if he didn’t get her justice, the SP accused the BJP of failing to ensure law and order in the state. The BJP, meanwhile, claimed the investigation would eventually reveal the involvement of SP-related people in the crime. Three people have since been arrested for the crime, with police saying they committed the crime under the influence of alcohol. 

The SP also raised the Maha Kumbh stampede issue during the campaign.