In a setback to the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress and the BJP on Tuesday wrested two Assembly seats — Deoband and Muzaffarnagar— from it. The SP, however, retained the Bikapur seat, which is in Faizabad district.
The by-polls were necessitated after the death of the incumbents; in this case, all three had belonged to the SP.
In Deoband, the Congress candidate Maviya Ali Khan won, while BJP’s Kapil Deo Agarwal secured Muzaffarnagar . The SP’s Anand Sen Yadav, a former minister in the BSP government, won in Bikapur. The BSP did not fight the by-polls.
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In the by-polls in UP in 2014 a few months after the Lok Sabha elections, the SP had won nine out of 12 seats. Then in 2015, the party won the Charkhari and Pharendra seats in by-poll.