Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate and influential Other Backward Castes (OBC) leader Swami Prasad Maurya, contesting the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, on Thursday, 10 March, lost from Fazilnagar seat in Kushinagar district with 71,015 votes.
The battle for the Fazilnagar seat was largely expected to be triangular, with SP turncoat and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Mohammad Illyas Ansari and BJP's Surender Singh Kushwaha in the fray.
Kushwaha won the election with 1,16,029 votes, with Maurya in second place, logging in 71,015 votes. Meanwhile, BSP candidate Ansari grabbed 28,237 votes.
In the 2017 polls, Fazilnagar was won by Ganga Singh Kushwaha of the BJP.
Maurya, who joined the SP after tendering his resignation from Yogi Adityanath's UP Cabinet in January, contested from Padrauna in 2017.
A four-time candidate from the Padrauna Assembly segment, Maurya won the seat on a BJP ticket in 2017, defeating BSP’s Javed Iqbal by a margin of 93,000 votes.
SP Maurya Quits BJP
In his resignation letter, Maurya said that he had resigned in protest against the Yogi Adityanath government's "gross neglect towards Dalits, backward castes, farmers, unemployed youth, and medium and small traders".
Maurya and his loyalists were seen as some sort of misfits in the BJP.
Those close to Maurya say that he never quite warmed up to the BJP's Hindutva politics, especially that of UP CM Yogi Adityanath.
"I fulfilled my responsibilities despite adverse circumstances and ideology," Maurya wrote in his resignation letter.
How Had SP Fared in 2017 Polls?
In 2017, the SP had contested 311 out of 403 seats, and had fought the state polls in alliance with the Congress.
The election was swept by the BJP, which had won 312 seats, with SP, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and Congress following closely with 47, 19, and 7 seats, respectively.
This year, the exit polls have projected an easy win for the BJP again, with the SP trailing in its wake. The Akhilesh Yadav-led SP, which is the main challenger, looks set to only get between 71 and 157 seats out of 403, clearly falling short of the majority.
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