Faizabad: Mandir no guarantee of mandate

The construction of Ram temple and BJP’s campaign around consecration of Ram Lalla’s idol in Jan, just months ahead of Lok Sabha polls, did not reap the dividends that the party had hoped for.
BJP stalwart Lallu Singh failed to win Faizabad, the parliamentary constituency of which Ayodhya is a part, against Samajwadi Party’s Awadesh Prasad, who won by a margin of over 54,000 votes.
Prasad, a nine-time MLA and one of the founding members of SP, was locked in a close fight with two-time MP Lallu Singh till Tuesday afternoon as votes were counted.
It was from 1.30pm that Prasad’s lead kept inching upwards, before he was announced as the winner. While Prasad reached the counting venue after offering prayers at Hanumangarhi temple, Lallu Singh did not turn up at all.
A Dalit candidate, Prasad was fielded by Samajwadi Party on a general seat. The party’s gamble paid off as over 2.5 lakh Passis in the constituency appear to have backed him.
The saffron camp lost all four other Lok Sabha constituencies in the Ayodhya division — Ambedkarnagar, Barabanki, Sultanpur and Amethi.
In Barabanki, voters elected Congress candidate Tanuj Punia, while SP’s Lalji Verma, a seasoned politician, won from Ambedkarnagar.
A big upset came in Sultanpur, where BJP’s senior parliamentarian Maneka Gandhi lost to SP’s Rambhual Nishad. And in Amethi, Union women and child development minister Smriti Irani lost to debutant and Gandhi family loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma.
BJP had won Barabanki, Faizabad and Sultanpur seats in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. BSP’s Ritesh Pandey had held Ambedkarnagar in the 2019 polls. This time, Pandey fought from the seat as a BJP candidate but lost to Verma by over 1.37 lakh votes.