UP Bypolls 2024: The Election Commission on Tuesday announced the schedule for the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections as well as for the by-elections in Uttar Pradesh. However, out of the 10 seats up for the assembly seats, the poll body announced dates for only nine, leaving out the Milkipur seat of Ayodhya.
Responding to why elections were not announced for Milkipur, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar stated that the seats on which by-election dates have not been announced are the ones whose cases are in court. "The election petition (that is, the matter has reached the court) regarding the seats for which by-election dates have not been announced is filed in the court," CEC Kumar said during the press conference on October 15.
According to the announcement made by EC, by-elections will be held on November 13 for 47 assembly constituencies and one parliamentary constituency, i.e., Wayanad, which became vacant after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi won the Lok Sabha polls from Rae Bareli. The results will be announced on November 20 along with that of Maharashtra and Jharkhand Assembly polls.
About Ayodhya's Milkipur Seat
In a shocking defeat, the Bharatiya Janata Party had lost the Ayodhya seat, despite the party's efforts to make the Ram Mandir consecration a central issue in its Lok Sabha campaigning. The party's performance fell short of expectations, giving the Samajwadi Party a chance to wrest the seat from the BJP.
Samajwadi Party's Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit leader and an MLA from Milkipur, had won the parliamentary elections from Faizabad in an unexpected outcome. He had defeated BJP's Lalloo Singh by more than 50,000 votes. Thereafter, he left the seat, following which the party fielded his son Ajit Prasad as the candidate for the by-polls.
Since then, the Ayodhya's Milkipur seat, which is a part of the Faizabad parliamentary constituency, has been a critical one, representing a battle for prestige. While BJP has been trying to re-claim the seat following its Faizabad setback to make up for its lost momentum in the state, the Samajwadi Party is also under pressure to maintain its dominance and prove itself again.
However, it seems that the parties will have to wait to claim the seat as former BJP MLA Baba Gorakhnath, who lost the seat to Awadhesh Prasad in the 2022 Assembly elections, has filed a petition in the court. Gorakhnath had won the seat in 2017 assembly elections but lost to Prasad in 2022 by 12,923 votes.
Former UP CM and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav reacted to Milkipur seat missing from the UP bypolls schedule.
In a post on X, he said: "Whoever has avoided the war, consider that he has lost the war."