Lowest margin wins in UP elections: 49 candidates lost battle less than 5,000 votes

Lucknow, Mar 12: Despite the BJP convincingly winning the UP battle, 18 candidates lost the battle by less than 5,000 votes while same fate was met by 25 candidates from the Samajwadi Party.

Last but not the least, three nominees of the Rashtriya Lok Dal also lost by less than the aforementioned dates. Allies of the saffron party -- Nishad Party and Apna Dal (Sonelal) -- had to face defeat by a very small margin on two seats and one seat respectively. The narrowest victory margin was registered in Dhampur, where BJP's Ashok Kumar Rana defeated SP's Naeem-ul-Hasan by 203 votes.

Sakendra Verma, the BJP candidate from Kursi, won the poll contest against SP's Rakesh Verma by 217 votes. The SP candidates in Aliganj, Aurai, Bahraich, Chhibramau, Etawah, Faridpur, Jalalabad, Bindki, Jalesar, Katra, Madhuban, Manikpur, Madiyahun, Mohammadi, Moradabad Nagar, Nakud, Phulpur, Salon, Shahganj, Shravasti, Sitapur, Sultanpur and Tirwa lost by less than 5,000 votes. The victory margin in six of these seats was less than 1,000 votes.

The RLD candidates lost from Baraut, Nehtaur and Bijnor by 315 votes, 258 votes and 1,445 votes respectively.

BJP's Kamlesh Saini was defeated by SP's Swami Omvesh by just 234 votes from Chandpur. The saffron party lost the Ramnagar seat by 261 votes and the Isauli seat by 269 votes.

The margin of defeat for the BJP candidates was less than 5,000 votes in Basti Sadar, Bhadohi, Bisauli, Dibiyapur, Dumariaganj, Ghazipur, Etawah, Jasrana, Kithor, Meja, Patiali, Farenda, Raniganj, Sareni and Zaidpur.

It was less than 1,000 votes in six of these seats. The Nishad Party lost the Handia and Kalpi seats to the SP by 3,543 votes and 2,816 votes respectively. The Apna Dal (S) nominee was defeated by the SP candidate from Bachhrawan by 2,812 votes.

In the recently-concluded UP polls, BJP emerged victorious in 255 seats while the SP won 111 seats.