UP elections: Congress contested 399 seats lost deposit in 387

New Delhi, Mar 12: The Congress which got a drubbing in Uttar Pradesh lost deposit in 387 of the 399 seats that it contested. The party managed to win just 2 seats in the recently concluded elections that was won by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BSP which contested all the 403 seats lost deposit in 290. The BJP contested in 376 seats and lost deposit in 3 while the SP contested 347 seats and lost deposit in 6.

However the BJP's ally Apna Dal (S) and Nishad did not lose their deposits in the 27 seats the parties contested between themselves. The SP's partners SBSP and Apna Dal (K) contested in 25 seats and lost deposit in 8. In all, 4,442 candidates contested the elections and 3,552 lost their deposits. The rules say that a candidate loses deposit when he or she fails to secure one-sixth of the total valid votes polled in a constituency.

In 2017, the Congress won six seats and this year it was just two. Even the vote share dropped to 2.4 per cent in comparison to the 6.1 per cent in the previous elections. These numbers indicate that the strike rate of the Congress was just 0.5 per cent.

The campaign by the Gandhis could not even manage a decent showing in their bastions of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

Ajay Lallu, there Congress president and two time MLA from Tamkuhi Raj too was unable to save his seat and ended up third. Lallu bagged 30,000 votes when compared to the 1.15 lakh votes won by BJP-Nishad Party candidate, Asim Kumar.

Ahead of the elections, the Congress launched the ladki hun, lad sakti hun campaign. While it did make headlines, in reality one one woman candidate from the Congress, Aradhana Mishra Mona won. In all the Congress had fielded 159 women candidates.

The second winner for the Congress was Virendra Chaudhary from the Pharenda seat. He defeated the BJP's Bajrang Bahadur Singh by just 1,078 votes.