New Delhi:
The Samajwadi Party is leading the opposition INDIA bloc's charge in Uttar Pradesh - a politically key state that sends 80 MPs (the most of any state) to the Lok Sabha.
At 9.30 pm the SP had won 29 seats and was ahead in eight more for a haul of 37 -its best-ever return from a UP Lok Sabha election. The previous best was 36 in 2004, when the Congress-led UPA won.
Also, Mr Yadav has all but claimed victory for himself from the family bastion of Kannuaj; at 9 pm he was 1.7 lakh votes ahead of the BJP's Subrat Pathak. His wife, Dimple Yadav, had won from Mainpuri.
The BJP, meanwhile, had won 28 seats and was ahead in five others, while its ally, the Apne Dal (Sonelal) had won one. TheAazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) had also won one.
Among the seats the BJP won wasPrime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, and Karan Bhushan Singh - the son of sex assault accused Brij Bhushan Singh - from Kaiserganj.
In the last Lok Sabha election - in which the BJP got 62 of the state's 80 seats and its ally, the Apna Dal (Sonelal) picked up another two - the Samajwadi Party managed a return of only five.
The party got just five seats in the 2014 election too, down from 23 in the 2009 poll.
READ |UPset For BJP, Surprise Gains For Congress In Dramatic Race
The Congress, meanwhile, had won six seats, including the Amethi and Raebareli strongholds, where Kishori Lal and Rahul Gandhi defeated the BJP's Smriti Irani and the BSP's Thakur Prasad Yadav.
The Amethi result - the Congress won by nearly 1.7 lakh votes was big news.
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Not only did it win back a seat held by ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from 1981 (a bypoll after Indira Gandhi, his mother and predecessor, was assassinated) to 1991 (when he was also, tragically, assassinated), but it also handed Union Minister Smriti Irani and the BJP a stinging defeat.
READ |Rahul Gandhi Set To Win Raebareli, Surpass Sonia's Winning Margin
Rahul Gandhi - expected to contest Amethi but opted for Raebareli, left vacant after his mother, Sonia Gandhi, shifted to the Rajya Sabha - finished a record 3.9 lakh votes ahead of the BJP's Dinesh Singh.
Samajwadi Party's UP Strong Showing
The SP today did what neither the Congress nor the BSP could do in the past two national or state polls - defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in UP.
It is not, though, a result that has come out of the blue.
In the 2022 Assembly election the BJP was dominant; Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party claimed 255 of the state's 417 seats. The closest rival, though, was the SP, which won 111 seats.
Mr Yadav's party's haul then was a massive 64-seat spike from five years ago and was driven, to a significant extent, by the farmers' protests that rocked the BJP's 'double-engine government'.
That groundswell of support seems to have carried over into this election.
UP Lok Sabha Election Results: What Exit Polls Said
UP has emerged as the big surprise in this election. A poll of exit polls had indicated the BJP would continue its powerhouse showing in the state with 68 seats won by the party and NDA partners.
The INDIA grouping was expected to win just 12 seats. In fact, Republic Bharat-Matrize and India Today-Axis My India declared the bloc could manage as little as six seats.
There was, however, one that bucked the prediction trend.
TV5 Telugu said the opposition group would claim a narrow majority with 43 seats.
The Samajwadi Party is contesting as part of the Congress-led INDIA opposition bloc, which was formed in June last year to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP.
READ |INDIA Bloc's UP Seat Pact Done, Congress Gets 17 Seats
The SP has fielded 63 candidates and the Congress 17. This seat-share deal made headlines when announced as it was the first by members of the INDIA bloc, and came after false starts in other states, as well as a bitter breakdown in talks between the Congress and the Trinamool in Bengal.
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