UP Election Results 2022: SP chief Akhilesh Yadav defeats BJP's Prof SP Singh Baghel by over 67,000 vote in Karhal

Like CM Yogi Adityanath, Akhilesh Yadav was contesting state assembly elections for the first time. (File image)

In Karhal, Samajwadi Party chief Akhliesh Yadav defeated BJP's Prof SP Singh Baghel by 67,504 votes.

Contestants were SP chief and former CM Akhilesh Yadav, BJP's SP Singh Baghel and BSP's Kuladip Narayan.

Akhilesh Yadav is said to have chosen this constituency because it is a party stronghold and also because it falls in west UP, where there is a simmering discontent over the farm laws.

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Like CM Yogi Adityanath, Yadav was contesting state assembly elections for the first time. Yadav is a four time MP. The importance of Akhilesh winning from here could be gauged from SP founder and Akhilesh’s estranged father Mulayam Singh coming out to campaign for his son. The patriarch had stayed away from election campaigns for a while now.

Yadav has been pitted against BJP’s Union minister SP Singh Baghel. The constituency has been a bastion of the Yadav family where the SP has lost just once since 1992.

Meanwhile, SP Singh Baghel, who is contesting from BJP, used to be the personal security officer (PSO) of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. 

In February, after an attack on his convoy, Baghel was assigned Z category security by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). His car was pelted with stones and sticks, as he was returning from a campaign meeting in Mainpuri. News reports had, however, said that the security had been assigned to Baghel as the Minister of State for Law and Justice, and that it had been done a few days before the attack.

Farm laws anger

In west UP, where Karhal falls, SP-RLD alliance is hoping to tap into anger against the farmers’ laws. 

The saffron party, which had clean-swept western UP in the parliamentary polls of 2014 and 2019, along with the assembly elections of 2017, has reportedly sent out feelers to the RLD camp.

"We wanted to welcome (RLD president) Jayant Chaudhary to our home, but he has chosen the wrong path. People of the Jat community will speak to him. Our door is always open for him," BJP MP Parvesh Verma said on January 26.

Chaudhary, who is the grandson of late former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, rebuffed the BJP's invite. "Don't invite me, ask the 700+ farmers' families whose homes you destroyed," he had tweeted.