Lucknow: SP candidate in Phulpur Nagendra Patel established a slender lead over his nearest BJP rival in the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha bypolls as counting picked up pace on Wednesday, a poll official said.
Initially, during the counting of the postal ballots, Kaushlendra Singh Patel of the BJP was leading, but after 10 a.m. as counting pace picked up, the Samajwadi Party candidate made a lead of 1437 votes.
After three rounds of counting, Nagendra Patel has got 7,600 votes against Kaushlendra Singh Patel’s 6,163 votes.
In Gorakhpur, the parliamentary constituency of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Upendra Dutt Shukla of the Bharatiya Janata Party has established a lead of over 3,200 votes over his nearest SP rival Pravin Nishad.
Poor voting percentage in the by polls and the coming together of arch rivals SP-Bahujan Samaj Party has made the contest interesting in the elections. (IANS)