Lucknow: For those who switched parties at the last minute, these elections have not brought good news and most of the turncoats have lost.
A major upset among the turncoats was that of Ritesh Pandey from Ambedkar Nagar. The sitting BSP MP moved to BJP on the eve of the elections but lost his seat by 1.37 lakh votes to Samajwadi Party’s Lali Varma.
Another MP to lose his seat was Danish Ali, who moved from BSP to Congress. Ali lost the contest for the Amroha seat by about 30,000 votes.
Bhadohi MP Ramesh Bind, who was denied a ticket by the BJP, switched to SP at the last minute to contest from Mirzapur seat and lost by 38,000 votes.
Other candidates who shifted from BSP to BJP include Suresh Singh, Hitendra Kumar, Nand Kishore Pundhir, Sarika Singh Baghel, Sacchidanand Pandey and Rajendra Singh Solanki. All of them ended up losing the elections.
Those who also faced defeat included Vijendra Singh Bijnore (who switched from RLD to BSP); Abid Ali (who moved from SP to BSP); and Majid Ali (who switched to BSP from Azad Samaj Party).
The two candidates, who could retain their seats despite changing parties are Afzal Ansari from Ghazipur and Ram Shiromani Verma from Shravasti. Both the leaders had moved from BSP to SP before the elections. Afzal Ansari managed to retain his Ghazipur seat while Ram Shiromani Varma defeated BJP’s Saket Mishra from Shravasti.
–IANS