Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav
Highlight
- Akhilesh Yadav won from Karhal seat by a margin of 67,504 votes.
- He defeated BJP leader and Union Minister SP Baghel
- Azam Khan defeated BJP rival Akash Saxena by a margin of over 55,000 votes
Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav is likely to resign as MLA, sources told India TV on Saturday. Akhilesh is the Lok Sabha MP from Azamgarh. He won the assembly election from Karhal assembly seat of Mainpuri district in the recently concluded elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Yadav won the Karhal assembly seat by a margin of 67,504 votes. He got 1,48,196 votes, while his nearest rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Union Minister SP Singh Baghel got 80,692 votes.
Karhal is considered a stronghold of the SP. Yadav got 60.12 per cent votes, while Baghel got 32.74 per cent votes. Yadav contested the assembly elections for the first time. During his tenure as Chief Minister, Akhilesh Yadav was a member of the Legislative Council.
Sources said that Samajwadi Party’s Muslim face Azam Khan, who contested the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections while in jail, may follow suit. Khan won the election from Rampur assembly seat. He is also likely to resign from the MLA post and continue to represent the Rampur seat in the Lok Sabha.
Khan, a former Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister and nine-time MLA, won the Rampur seat against BJP’s nearest rival Akash Saxena (Honey) by a margin of over 55,000 votes. Khan got 1.31 lakh (or 59.71 per cent) of the total votes, while Saxena got 76,084 (or 34.62 per cent).
Khan is currently lodged in Sitapur jail on several charges including theft, criminal intimidation and land encroachment.
The BJP retained power in Uttar Pradesh, won a majority of the state’s 403 seats and is once again set to continue with the Yogi Adityanath-led government. The saffron party alone won 255 seats and its allies Apna Dal (S) and Nishad won 12 and 6 seats respectively. Samajwadi Party came second with 111 seats.