As expected, the BJP clinched 7 of the 9 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday where by-elections were held on November 20.

The BJP and its NDA partner RLD retained their 5 seats and also wrested two seats from the Samajwadi Party — Kundarki and Katehari.

In all 9 seats, there was a direct contest between the BJP and SP, but smaller parties like BSP, Azad Samaj Party, and even AIMIM dented the vote bank of SP.

However, the main surprise was witnessed in the Kundarki assembly seat, where BJP candidate Ramveer Singh won by over 1.41 lakh votes, despite 64% of the voters being Muslim. This was the highest winning margin in these by-elections.

The counting was still underway, as 4 rounds of votes had yet to be counted.

SP candidate Mohammad Rizwan received just over 25,000 votes, while Azad Samaj Party nominee Chand Babu got over 14,000 votes, and the AIMIM candidate secured 7,663 votes.

BJP had won the Kundarki seat last time in 1991.

In the Katehari seat in Ambedkarnagar district, BJP candidate Dharamraj Nishad defeated SP nominee Shobhawati Verma by a margin of over 34,000 votes. BSP candidate Amit Verma received over 41,000 votes. Shobhawati is the wife of the present SP MP from Ambedkarnagar, Lalji Verma.

In the Majhwan seat in Mirzapur district, BJP candidate Shushismita Maurya defeated SP candidate Dr Jyoti Bind by a margin of over 4,900 votes. BSP candidate Deepak Twain got over 34,000 votes.

In the Phulpur assembly seat in Prayagraj district, BJP’s Deepak Patel defeated his nearest rival, SP candidate Mohammad Mujitiba Siddiqui, by over 11,000 votes. BSP candidate Jitendra Kumar Singh got over 20,000 votes.

In the Sisamau seat in Kanpur, SP candidate Naseem Solanki defeated her nearest BJP rival Suresh Awasthi by 8,564 votes.

In a contest within the Yadav family in the Karhal assembly seat, SP candidate Tej Pratap Singh defeated BJP candidate Anujesh Pratap Singh by 14,725 votes. BSP candidate Avinash Kumar Shakya got more than 8,000 votes.

Tej Pratap is the son-in-law of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and the nephew of SP President Akhilesh Yadav, while Anujesh is the son-in-law of the late Mulayam Singh Yadav and the brother-in-law of SP MP Dharmendra Yadav.

BJP candidate Surender Diler defeated SP’s Charu Kain by 38,393 votes in the Khair (Reserved) assembly seat in Aligarh district, while BJP’s Sanjeev Sharma won by 69,351 votes against SP candidate Singh Raj Jatav in the Ghaziabad assembly seat.

In the Meerapur assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar district, RLD candidate Mithlesh Pal defeated SP nominee Sumbal Rana by 30,796 votes. Azad Samaj candidate Party Zahid Hussain got 22,661 votes, while AIMIM candidate Mohammad Arshad received 18,869 votes.