In a contest where Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav had staked his personal prestige, his daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav lost to BJP's Rita Bahuguna Joshi in Lucknow Cantt seat.
The loss is a major jolt to the party and the Yadav family as the entire family had campaigned for the 'chhoti bahu'.
Joshi won by a margin of 33,796 votes in the seat.
While Reeta Bahuguna Joshi secured 95,402 votes, Aparna got only 61,606 votes and stood in the second place while the BSP's Yogesh Dixit got 26,036 votes.
Besides Mulayam, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, his wife Dimple Yadav had also campaigned on this seat for Aparna but all their efforts went in vain with people selecting the BJP candidate.
Campaigning for the wife his younger son Prateek Yadav, Mulayam made an emotional appeal for her saying the elections were attached to his political respect and honour and he would be grateful to people if they supported his younger daughter-in-law.
He had promised to fulfil all promises irrespective of his party coming to power or not.
"But if the party forms government, more works will be undertaken in a better way," he said, recalling the works done for women welfare, poor and labourers.
Lucknow Cantonment has traditionally been a bastion of the BJP, which started its winning streak here in 1991 with party's Satish Bhatia defeating Premwari Tiwari of Congress.
The BJP continued its winning spree till 2007. In 2012 assembly polls (post-delimitation), the BJP lost this seat to the Congress candidate Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who then defeated three times sitting MLA Suresh Chandra Tiwari.
Joshi had switched sides from the Congress to the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) just before the Assembly elections.
The BJP, along with its alliance partners, is set to win over 320 seats in the 403-member Assembly.
