Varanasi: The Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance retained Majhawan Assembly seat for the third consecutive time on Saturday, dashing dreams of the Samajwadi Party (SP) to win the seat for the first time.
In a nail-biting contest, the BJP's Suchismita Maurya bagged 77,737 votes to defeat the SP's Jyoti Bindu (72,815) by a margin of 4,922 votes. Bahujan Samaj Party's Deepak Tiwari secured 34,827 votes and left both the BJP and the SP in many Brahmin and Dalit-dominated areas, especially in the sis-Ganga areas of Mirzapur district.
A jubilant Maurya termed it a victory of people who have a deep faith in the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. She said that now development works would be done in Majhawan at an accelerated pace. However, SP's district chief Devi Prasad Chaudhary said that the BJP is destroying democracy by promoting wrong traditions due to which free and fair elections are becoming impossible. He blamed the local administration and police for exerting pressure on the voters to vote for the BJP.
Earlier, the counting of votes started amidst tight security arrangements. Maurya, who won this seat for the BJP in 2017, took the lead from the initial round. Her margin of lead over SP continued increasing until the 12th round. But later, the SP candidate started narrowing the gap and left BJP leaders sweating when the margin of lead dipped to only 1,000 by the 22nd round.
The BJP camp heaved a sigh of relief when the margin of lead started increasing again after the 26th round and the trend continued until the 34th round, including the counting of postal ballot votes. With this, the SP, which has never won this seat, could not open its account from here once again.
In 2022, Maurya was not allowed to contest as the BJP had spared this seat for alliance partner Nishad Party, which fielded Vinod Bind. In 2024, Vinod Bind was fielded by the BJP to contest the Lok Sabha election from Bhadohi parliamentary constituency, and he emerged victorious. Due to this, the Majhawan seat became vacant and a bypoll for the Assembly segment became inevitable.