BJP retains its Lucknow Cantonment bastion
LUCKNOW: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained the Lucknow Cantonment seat as its candidate Suresh Tiwari defeated his nearest rival Major (retired) Ashish Chaturvedi of the Samajwadi Party (SP) by a margin of 35,423 votes.
Suresh Tiwari secured 56,684 votes whereas Chaturvedi got 21,261 votes. The Congress’s Dilpreet Singh and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Arun Dwivedi got 19445 and 10709 votes respectively. The seat was held by BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who vacated it after winning the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat in May.
“Civic and other issues that bother common man will be our top priority,” said Suresh Tiwari.
The constituency is dominated by Brahmin, Sikh and Punjabi voters. Since 1991, the BJP has maintained its sway in the constituency, barring in 2012 when Congress candidate Rita Bahuguna Joshi had defeated three-time sitting BJP MLA Suresh Chandra Tewari. Joshi, however, switched sides and joined BJP before the 2017 assembly polls and retained the seat as a BJP candidate.
Satveer Singh Raju, a BJP
leader, said Tewari registered a great win.
“It’s the victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath,” he said.
Party workers thronged the BJP office to celebrate the victory and took out a procession. Some also distributed sweets.
The BJP candidate maintained a lead of 1032 votes in the
first round. In the first round, Suresh Tiwari got 1,869 votes while Ashish Chaturvedi got 837 votes. The margin increased to around 3,000 in the second round. In the second round, Tiwari got 4,578 votes and Chaturvedi polled 1618 votes. The margin of votes kept increasing as counting progressed. By the last round, the margin went up to 35,423 votes.