SP and BSP alliance impact on BJP dominated seats in Uttar Pradesh
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recorded a comprehensive win in Uttar Pradesh in 2104 Lok Sabha elections, mopping 71 seats out of 80. Its allies got two seats, taking the tally of the BJP-led allaince to 73 in the state. This time things have changed with SP-BSP forming an alliance. Will Narendra Modi be able to repeat the previous performance of the BJP in UP in 2019?
To answer this question, IndiaTV went through the stats of 2014 polls to find out the number of votes polled by the BJP, the SP and the BSP on the seats where the saffron party emerged victorious. India TV added the votes of the SP and the BSP to find out on how many seats the BJP got outperformed by the alliance.
After all the number crunching, a surprising fact came to the fore. Out of 71 seats, on which the saffron party triumphed over its competitors, the BJP would have been able to defend only 36 seats had the SP-BSP fought together. The allaince would have emerged victorious on 35 seats.
The BJP fielded veteran candidates from several seats, winning some of those seats by a huge gap. In Varanasi, PM Narendra Modi's constituency, the saffron party outperformed the SP-BSP alliance by 4.75 lakh votes. Similarly, Murli Manohar Joshi registered a win over the SP-BSP combine in Kanpur by a margin of 3.95 lakh votes. Rajnath Singh was ahead of the combine by 4.39 lakh votes from Lucknow seat while Hema Malini won by a margin of 3.64 lakh votes from Mathura seat. Former Army chief General V K Singh won by a margin of 4.78 lakh votes from Ghaziabad seat.
