Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday extended his gratitude to the people of Uttar Pradesh and said that his party showed that seats of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) can be decreased. He mentioned that SP's vote share increased by one-and-a-half fold. The SP had in 2017 polls pocketed 21.85 per cent vote share. It increased to 32.06 per cent in the just held election.
Yadav won the election from the Karhal constituency, against BJP's SP Singh Baghel, but his party failed to cross the halfway mark of 202 to stake claim to form the government. The SP won a total of 111 seats, making a visible improvement from its 2017 tally when it won 47 seats.
"We have shown that BJP seats can be reduced. This reduction of BJP will continue unabated. More than half the confusion and delusion has been cleared, the rest will happen in a few days," he wrote on Twitter.
This was Akhilesh Yadav's first comment ever since poll results were announced on Thursday. He also thanked the public of Uttar Pradesh, saying "Hearty thanks to the people of UP for increasing our seats by two and a half times and vote percentage by one and a half times!"
UP Vote Share
The SP had last won elections in 2012 when it formed a majority government with 224 seats. Akhilesh Yadav headed the government before being dethroned by the BJP in 2017. In 2017, the SP had joined the ranks with the Congress while this time, it entered the fray with Jayant Choudhary's RLD.
The BJP and its allies won a total of 273 seats. The saffron party alone pocketed 255 seats, 53 more than the halfway mark.
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