Lok Sabha Election 2024 Result LIVE: Samajwadi Party Leads INDIA’s Big Charge In UP, Keeps BJP At Bay

New Delhi: 

The Samajwadi Party is leading the opposition INDIA bloc’s charge in Uttar Pradesh – a politically key state that sends 80 MPs (the most of any state) to the Lok Sabha.

At 3 pm the SP was leading In 35 seats and the BJP in 34. The Samajwadi Party’s best-ever performance in a UP Lok Sabha election was 36 in 2004 – when the Congress-led UPA won.

Also, Mr Yadav has all but claimed victory for himself from the family bastion of Kannuaj; at 3 pm he had a lead of nearly 3.5 lakh votes over Imran Bin Zafar from ex-Chief Minister Mayawati’s BSP.

The BJP’s Subrat Pathak is the filling in the electoral sandwich; he is over one lakh votes behind.

In the last Lok Sabha election – in which the BJP got 62 of the state’s 80 seats and its ally, the Apna Dal (Sonelal) picked up another two – the Samajwadi Party managed a return of only five.

The party got just five seats in the 2014 election too, down from 23 in the 2009 poll.

The Congress, meanwhile, is leading in seven seats, including the Amethi and Raebareli strongholds, where Kishori Lal and Rahul Gandhi are leading the BJP’s Smriti Irani and the BSP’s Thakur Prasad.

If it holds, the Amethi result – the Congress is over 1.1 lakh votes to the good – will be a big boost.

Not only will it win back a seat held by ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from 1981 (a bypoll after Indira Gandhi, his mother and predecessor, was assassinated) to 1991 (when he was also, tragically, assassinated), but it will also hand Union Minister Smriti Irani and the BJP a stinging defeat.

Rahul Gandhi – expected to contest Amethi but opted for Raebareli, left vacant after his mother, Sonia Gandhi, shifted to the Rajya Sabha – is 3.3 lakh votes ahead of the BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh.

READ | Rahul Gandhi Set To Win Raebareli, Surpass Sonia’s Winning Margin

Should today’s numbers hold the SP will have done what neither the Congress nor the BSP could do in the past two national or state polls – defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in UP.

It is not, though, a result that has come out of the blue.

In the 2022 Assembly election the BJP was dominant; Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party claimed 255 of the state’s 417 seats. The closest rival, though, was the SP, which won 111 seats.

Mr Yadav’s party’s haul then was a massive 64-seat spike from five years ago and was driven, to a significant extent, by the farmers’ protests that rocked the BJP’s ‘double-engine government’.

That groundswell of support seems to have carried over into this election.

UP Lok Sabha Election Results: What Exit Polls Said

UP has emerged as the big surprise in this election. A poll of exit polls had indicated the BJP would continue its powerhouse showing in the state with 68 seats won by the party and NDA partners.

The INDIA grouping was expected to win just 12 seats. In fact, Republic Bharat-Matrize and India Today-Axis My India declared the bloc could manage as little as six seats.

There was, however, one that bucked the prediction trend.

TV5 Telugu said the opposition group would claim a narrow majority with 43 seats.

The Samajwadi Party is contesting as part of the Congress-led INDIA opposition bloc, which was formed in June last year to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP.

READ | INDIA Bloc’s UP Seat Pact Done, Congress Gets 17 Seats

The SP has fielded 63 candidates and the Congress 17. This seat-share deal made headlines when announced as it was the first by members of the INDIA bloc, and came after false starts in other states, as well as a bitter breakdown in talks between the Congress and the Trinamool in Bengal.

2024 Lok Sabha Election: What Exit Polls Said

Two of 12 exit pollsters – India Today-Axis My India and India TV-CNX – believe the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance could amass as much as 401 seats. A third – News24-Today’s Chanakya – says it will land on the 400-seat mark, and three others – ABP News-C Voter, Jan Ki Baat, and News Nation – give Mr Modi’s election-winning juggernaut a maximum of 383, 392, and 378 seats.

READ | PM Modi Hat-Trick, Powered By South, Bengal, Odisha: Exit Polls

The BJP coalition is not expected to go below 281 in the race to win 272 seats.

The INDIA bloc – seen by many as a ragtag bunch of opposition parties – laughed off the predictions and vowed it will do what it set out to in June last year – defeat Prime Minister Modi and the BJP.

Congress boss Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have insisted the group will win 295 seats.

The available exit poll data disagrees, although four give the bloc 150+ seats.

READ | Verdict On BJP’s ‘400 Paar’ Today. Can Party Repeat Congress Feat?

TV9 Bharatvarsh-Polstrat, Times Now-ETG, and Republic TV-P Marq say the INDIA group will win 166, 152, and 154 seats, while News Nation and ABP News-C Voter predict hauls between 152 and 182.

India News-D Dynamics and News 24-Today’s Chanakya are far less sanguine, predicting 125 and 107 seats only, while the others believe INDIA will score between 109 and 166 seats.

The BJP is, it therefore seems, well on its way to scoring 370 seats (the internal target), and is closer than many expected to the ‘abki baar, 400 paar’ target that includes its NDA partners’ success.