Lok Sabha elections: Ravi Kishan wins Gorakhpur seat by 3,01,664 votes

Gorakhpur (UP), Mar 23: BJP candidate and Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan on Thursday won the Gorakhpur seat by defeating his nearest rival Samajwadi Party candidate Rambhual Nishad. Kishan defeated Nishad by a margin of 3,01,664 votes, EC said here. Kishan polled 7,17122 votes, while Nishad got 4,15,458 votes.

Winning Gorakhpur had become a matter of prestige for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Once considered Yogi Adityanath's bastion, the BJP lost to the SP-BSP alliance in the 2018 by-polls.
The bye poll blow came after the BJP tasted the back to back successes in the Uttar Pradesh. The party won 73 out of the 80 seats in 2014 Lok Sabha elections and in 2017, the BJP convincingly won the assembly elections.

The constituency that Yogi Adityanath represented for five terms before vacating it in 2017 was wrested away from the BJP in a bypoll. Samajwadi Party's Praveen Kumar Nishad defeated BJP's Upendra Dutt Shukla by a margin of 21,881 votes in the by elections, dealing a blow to the BJP's prestige. The BJP is left no stone unturned to ensure that Gorakhpur is back in their kitty. With SP, BSP and RLD forming a magathbandhan, and Congress and BJP in the fray, Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituency was set for a three-way contest.

This time, BJP had fielded actor-turned-politician Ravi Kishan from the constituency. He was up against Congress' Madhusudan Tiwari and SP's Ram Bhuwal Nishad.

PTI