The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got its biggest shock in Uttar Pradesh from Faizabad constituency, where the Ayodhya temple was inaugurated, after Samajwadi Party candidate Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit leader, defeated the saffron party’s Lallu Singh by a margin of 54,567 votes.
The BJP had trumpeted the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya during the campaign as one of the biggest promises that has been fulfilled and berated the Opposition Congress for not accepting the invitation when the idol consecration ceremony was held in December.
Lallu Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won the Faizabad seat in Uttar Pradesh consecutively for the last two terms. While Awadesh Prasad bagged 5,54,289 votes, Lallu Singh received 4,99,722 votes. Sachidanand Pandey of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was in third place with 46407 votes.
Speaking at a road show in Ayodhya, a month ago after his first visit to the newly built Ram Temple, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said 'Hearts of people in Ayodhya are as big as Lord Ram’. However, as the counting for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh progressed, the saffron party's biggest bastion began to throw in signs of collapse. Both the NDA and the INDIA bloc were in a neck-to-neck contest with the Samajwadi Party and the Congress bettering their electoral performance.
In Uttar Pradesh, the INDIA Bloc (SP and Congress) is leading in 43 seats while the NDA has leads in 33 seats.