Bijawar in MP saves the day for SP

LUCKNOW: Winning the Bijawar seat in Madhya Pradesh saved the day for the Samajwadi Party (SP) which drew a blank in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. It did not contest in Telangana and Mizoram.

The party takes the result as a shot in its arm as it now will have representation in three state assemblies— Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Samajwadi Party spokesperson Abdul Hafiz Gandhi said: “The results are encouraging for us. The party has strengthened its organisational structure in MP, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan.”

However, party president Akhilesh Yadav’s ambition of earning the national tag for the regional party will have to wait.

The Samajwadi Party’s Rajesh Kumar ‘Babloo Bhaiya maintained a lead from the first round and eventually defeated the BJP’s Pushpendra Nath Pathak ‘Guddan Bhaiya’ in Bijawar by nearly 37,000 votes. Since morning, the SP had been in a neck and neck fight with the BJP in Paraswada. Eventually, both SP and BJP lost and the Congress overtook them to add the seat to its tally.

The SP focused on Madhya Pradesh more for the reason that it was there that it had registered its best performance ever outside Uttar Pradesh. The SP had won seven seats in the central Indian state in 2003, polling 3.7% of the votes.

Initially, Akhilesh declared the Samajwadi Party will contest all the 230 seats in MP and all the 90 in Chhattisgarh. Eventually, the party fielded 52 candidates in MP and 17 in Chattisgarh. It contested five seats in Rajasthan. Akhilesh addressed 17 rallies in three states: 12 in MP, two in Chhattisgarh, and three in Rajasthan.