Gorakhpur: BJP won the Deoria Sadar seat with a good margin as its candidate Dr Satyaprakash Mani Tripathi defeated Samajwadi Party’s Brahma Shankar Tripathi by 20,089 votes, reports Arjumand Bano.
In the electoral fight that had five Tripathis in fray, BJP’s Satya Prakash Mani polled 68,732 votes for the pole position, leaving SP candidate Brahma Shankar at second spot with 48,643 votes, while BSP’s Abhay Nath claimed the third spot with 22,069 votes.
Congress candidate Mukund Bhaskar Mani Tripathi stood fifth with just 3,692 votes, lagging behind even independent candidate Ajay Pratap Singh aka Pintu Singh, son of late BJP MLA Janmejay Singh, who polled 19,299 votes. Another Tripathi, Umesh Mani fielded by Manuvadi Party polled just 894 votes.
Deoria Sadar seat had fallen vacant after the demise of BJP MLA Janmejay Singh in August. Singh had won the seat twice — in 2012 and 2017 elections.
All the four major parties, BJP, SP, BSP and Congress gave tickets to Brahmin candidates.
The sweeping victory has reaffirmed BJP’s strong hold in Deoria and dispelled all rumours of Brahmin resentment against the party.
It also shows that Congress has failed to regain its lost ground.
“The results show the Brahmin community still prefers BJP over other parties. BJP candidate Satya Prakash Mani Tripathi has a good image and is known as a gentleman. CM Yogi Adityanath’s impact further boosted the party and resulted in its victory. It is also a sign that the Modi wave is still working and the traditional voters of BJP haven’t changed,” said local educationist Kaushal Kishore Tripathi.
“Congress gave ticket to a controversial candidate whom a woman party worker accused of being a rape accused,” he added.
BJP government’s decision of giving free ration twice a month to the poor during lockdown and direct transfer of Rs 2,000 in account of farmers brought even the poor and scheduled caste community in its favour, said social worker Ravi Jaiswal.
“I work in rural areas and even farmers of SC community say they are happy with the government for direct cash transfer and free ration,” he added.
SP candidate Brahma Shankar Tripathi is a former minister and is a big local name but less enthusiasm was noticed in party workers which suggested they were not happy with candidate selection, Jaiswal said.
BSP’s Abhaynath Tripathi is a relative of Brahma Shankar and did well to come third, said a local.
In the 2017 assembly election Janmejay Singh had defeated SP candidate J P Jaiswal by 46,236 votes.
Polling was held on November 3 and 51.05% of total 3,36,565 voters had cast votes for 14 candidates in the fray.