The Bahujan Samaj Party managed to win only one of the 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, far from party president Mayawati's pre-poll claims that they would spring a surprise.
However, the BSP has managed to secure the third-highest vote share by bagging 12.9 per cent of the total votes polled in the state elections, according to the Election Commission figures.
The assembly elections were swept by the BJP for a straight second term after it got the highest 41.3 per cent vote share, followed by the Samajwadi Party with 32 per cent votes, according to the Election Commission.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the BSP had contested all 403 seats and won only 19 of them while its deposit was forfeited on 81 seats. The party had polled over 22 per cent of the total votes cast in 2017.
The BSP, a national party fighting all constituencies in the state like it did in 2017, won the Rasara seat in Ballia district where its sitting MLA Umashankar Singh got 87,887 (or 43.82 per cent) of the total votes counted, the EC website showed.
He defeated nearest rival Mahendra of the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) by 6,583 votes, the EC website showed.
In the 2017 assembly polls, Singh had won the Rasara seat after he got 92,272 (or 48.16 per cent) of the votes polled that year.
Earlier in the day, candidates of the Mayawati-led party appeared in fight in around half a dozen seats including Hapur, Jalalpur and Menhdawal but did not win.
Our party is preparing and contesting the polls with full might to once against form a government with full majority, BSP supremo Mayawati had said on February 14 while addressing a rally in Orai.
The former UP chief minister had also trashed opinion polls that projected BJP and Samajwadi Party as main stakeholders in the state, claiming her party would repeat a 2009-like performance and spring a surprise.
Counting of votes for UP assembly elections was underway. Final results were yet to be declared.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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