Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday broke his silence on the BJP's unprecedented victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.
The Samajwadi Party's coalition with the RLD and SBSP won a total of 128 seats, even as other opposition parties such as the Congress (2 seats) and BSP (1) faded into irrelevance.
Akhilesh tweeted about the results on Friday. He wrote “Hearty thanks to the people of UP for increasing our seats by two-and-half times and vote percentage by one-and-half times! We have shown that BJP seats can be reduced. This reduction of BJP will continue unabated. More than half the confusion and delusion has been cleared, the rest will happen in a few days. The struggle for public interest will win!”
It is yet unclear about what Akhilesh meant in his tweet by referring to “confusion”. Akhilesh was seen as the most credible challenger to the BJP and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and the poll results confirm his status as the main opposition leader.
Akhilesh had won the Karhal seat by a margin of over 67,000 votes.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, who led her party's campaign, had responded to the poll verdict on Thursday evening. She tweeted “The vote of the people is paramount in a democracy. Our workers and leaders worked hard, formed the organisation, fought on the issues of the people. But, we were not able to convert our hard work into votes. The Congress party is following a positive agenda for the betterment of UP and the public… will continue to fulfil the duty of a struggling opposition with full responsibility.”
BSP chief Mayawati is yet to comment on the election results, which is the party's worst performance in three decades. The BSP, which won a majority in the 2007 elections, was reduced to a vote share of 12.8 per cent on Thursday, a decline of nearly 10 per cent from 2017.
