Lucknow: The BJP and its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) continued to march ahead of their rivals, leading in 59 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, according to the Election Commission trends at 1.00pm. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading in Varanasi by a huge margin of more than 2.19 lakh votes against Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Shalini Yadav – his nearest rival, the data showed.
The BJP was ahead in 58 seats and the Apna Dal (S) in one. The opposition alliance of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the SP appeared to be doing well in 19 seats. In Congress bastion Amethi, party president Rahul Gandhi is trailing. Union Minister and BJP candidate Smriti Irani has a lead of over 2,600 votes against him.
The initial trends appeared to be mixed for the Yadav clan of the SP, with senior leaders Mulayam Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav maintaining their leads and the latter’s cousins and sitting MPs Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav trailing from Badaun and Firozabad seats respectively.
Akhilesh is leading by over 74,000 votes in Azamgarh and his father and SP patron Mulayam is ahead by nearly 13,000 votes.
The trends also threw up a mixed bag for the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) – a constituent of the BSP-SP led ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance). While RLD chief Ajit Singh is moving ahead in Muzaffarnagar, his son and party vice-president Jayant Chaudhary is trailing from Baghpat.
Mayawati-led BSP is ahead in 12 seats and the SP is leading in six seats.
The Congress is leading in only one seat – Rae Bareli, where UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi is ahead of BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh by over 52,000 votes.
SP stalwart Azam Khan is leading in Rampur by over 67,000 votes over BJP candidate Jaya Prada, who left the SP and joined the saffron party just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. BSP’s Kunwar Danish Ali, who joined the party after leaving the Janata Dal(Secular) is leading by a handsome margin of over 62,000 votes in Amroha.
Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Santosh Gangwar are leading in Lucknow and Bareilly respectively. However, Union Minister Manoj Sinha is trailing in Ghazipur. His rival, mafia-turned-politician Afzal Ansari of the BSP, is leading by over 3,000 votes.
Union Minister Maneka Gandhi is engaged in a see-saw battle in Sultanpur seat. She is ahead of BSP’s Chandra Bhadra Singh ‘Sonu’ by over 7,000 votes.