Flop show stuns SP

Day after the Samajwadi Party won the by-poll in two assembly seats in UP,the Bihar verdict delivered it a rude shock.

Day after the Samajwadi Party won the by-poll in two assembly seats in UP,the Bihar verdict delivered it a rude shock. Desperate to regain its status of state party in Bihar,the SP had contested 192 of the 243 seats even at the cost of its relations with Lalu Prasads RJD. The party,which had won four seats in the 2005 assembly elections,drew a blank this time. The election in-charge of Bihar,Ramchandra Yadav,who contested from Chainpur seat in Bhabua,lost his security deposit even though party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had campaigned for him.

In fact,Barring a few seats,SP candidates lost security deposits in all the seats contested, said Tulsi Singh,the president of SPs Bihar unit. The party,however,is putting up a brave front.

There is no cause for despair,we contested the elections to register our presence in Bihar politics and spread the organisation at the grassroot level, said the partys national spokesman,Rajya Sabha MP Mohan Singh. It is too early to identify the cause for the poor show, said Tulsi Singh.

Ahead of the polls,in October,party state president Akhilesh Yadav said the party was confident of improving its performance and garnering the required percentage of votes to regain the status of a state party in Bihar.

The SP was derecognised by the Election Commission in Bihar and Uttarakhand following its poor show after the 2009 Parliament elections. As per the Election symbol order,1968,to have the state party status,a party should garner at least six per cent votes.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections,the SP had not fielded any candidate in Bihar following an electoral understanding with the RJD and Ram Vilas Paswans Lok Janshakti Party. In the neighbouring Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh,it had got very few votes too.

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