Lucknow: A day after Bharatiya Janata Party's stunning defeat in Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said the victory margin would have been even higher had the Electronic Voter Machines (EVMs) been working properly.
“Only if the EVMs were working properly we would have got more votes, some EVMs when checked were found to have votes registered already. People could not express their anger properly through EVMs. If there were ballots then their anger would have been properly expressed,” he added.
Introducing the winning Samajwadi MPs Praveen Kumar Nishad and Nagendra Singh Patel to the media, Akhilesh said, “This is a victory of backward people and we Samajwadi people give respect to everyone. Some people are trying to remind us of old incidents, but let me tell you today our relations with Mayawati ji are very good. Now, we will have to monitor our behaviour with everyone. Youngsters have contributed a lot to this historic defeat of Bharatiya Janata Party.”
The BJP on Wednesday suffered a double jolt as it was trounced by the BSP backed Samajwadi Party in the high-stake bypolls for the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats.
Significantly, Gorakhpur was earlier held by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya had the Phulpur seat.
Samajwadi Party's Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel defeated BJP's Kaushlendra Singh Patel by a sizeable margin of 59,460 votes to win Phulpur bypoll. In Gorakhpur, Praveen Nishad of SP defeated his BJP rival by a margin of 21,961 votes.
Asked about his plans, Akhilesh added that he is in no hurry to go to Delhi.
“I believe more in going towards the villages of Uttar Pradesh rather than going to Delhi,” said Akhilesh.
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