BJP's defeat in UP bypolls a lesson for us: Yogi Adityanath after setback in Gorakhpur, Phulpur

New Delhi: A day after the massive jolt in the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha bypolls, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Thursday that the defeat was a lesson for the saffron party. He also said that the reason for the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gorakhpur and Phuphur was overconfidence.

Talking to a leading English Daily, Yogi added that the setback was a lesson for the BJP. At the same time, he exuded confidence that party will get its act together and do well in the 2019 General Elections.

On the performance of his government after completion of one year in power, Yogi claimed that past governments of the state had destroyed institutions in UP and the first stage of their work was to remove potholes from the roads.

Slamming the previous regimes, he said that they did not give support price to the farmers for their crops and the BJP government had changed that. On the issue of crime, he talked about zero tolerance. 

Yogi further said that he believed UP would be able to defeat Maharashtra and become the first state to have an economy worth one trillion rupees.

In a stunning blow to the BJP, the party on Wednesday lost bypolls to all three Lok Sabha seats it contested, including its bastion Gorakhpur and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, besides Araria in Bihar.

A consolidation of OBC, Dalit and Muslim votes powered Samajwadi Party candidates to victory in Gorakhpur, a seat represented by Yogi for five successive terms and Phulpur, which elected his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. BJP had won Phulpur for the first time. Both of them had won their seats by margins of over 3 lakh votes. 

Shocked by the surprise defeat, Yogi had on Wednesday too attributed it to 'overconfidence' of the party and had called for an in-depth analysis of the causes.

SP's Pravin Nishad defeated BJP's Upendra Dutt Shukla by 21,961 votes in Gorakhpur, the seat which was with the party since 1989, while Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel of SP clinched the Phulpur seat drubbing the saffron party's Kaushalendra Singh Patel by 59,460 votes.

(With PTI inputs)