New Delhi: In his first response on Samajwadi Party's performance in Uttar Pradesh Election, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday thanked voters for increasing the party's seats and vote share.
SP came a distant second to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh election. It secured 111 seats, getting 32.06 per cent votes while the BJP retained power in UP by winning 255 out of 403 constituencies, securing a 41.29 per cent vote share.
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Taking to Twitter, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav wrote: "Hearty thanks to the people of UP for increasing our seats by 2.5 times and vote percentage by 1.5 times! We have shown that BJP's seats can be reduced. This reduction will continue unabated. More than half the confusion and delusion have been cleared, the rest will happen in a few days. The struggle for public interest will win!".
Akhilesh Yadav won from the Karhal assembly seat by a margin of 67,504 votes. He defeated Union minister and BJP leader SP Singh Baghel in the constituency.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya lost from Sirathu seat in Kaushambi district to Samajwadi Party's Pallavi Patel by 7,337 votes.
Samajwadi Party, which many expected would pose a stiff challenge to the BJP, fared way better than the 2017 assembly polls when it had secured 47 seats, but failed to unseat the ruling party.
The two other major parties - Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Indian National Congress (INC) - were reduced to a single digit. BSP won one seat and Congress secured two seats. The vote shares of the BSP and the Congress party stood at 12.88 per cent and 2.33 per cent, respectively.
In the 2017 Assembly election, SP had secured 47 seats while BJP won 312 constituencies.
(With Agency Inputs)