UP Assembly poll results: Despite Priyanka’s hard campaign, Congress plunges to lowest tally, vote share in UP

This was the grand old party’s worst-ever electoral performance in the politically-important state so far despite months of rigorous campaign undertaken by party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra across UP.

Priyanka had spearheaded a high-voltage Congress campaign centred on women and youths, with the party coming up with separate manifestos for them.

In the run-up to the polls, Priyanka had also taken the initiative to give 40 per cent of party tickets to women, with the party fielding 159 women candidates of its total 403 nominees in the polls.

The Congress, which has been in political wilderness in UP for over three decades, had garnered 7 seats with a 6.25 per cent vote share in the 2017 Assembly elections, when it had formed an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP).

In the current polls, Priyanka had addressed over 160 rallies and done over 40 roads shows, covering all the regions of the state.

Even UP Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu lost the election from his Tamkuhi Raj seat, which he had been wining since 2012 against all odds.

While accepting the UP election outcome, Priyanka Thursday also admitted the Congress’s failure to “convert party workers’ hard work into votes”. In her reaction posted on social media, she said: “Loktantra mein janta ka mat sarvapriya hai. Humare karyakartaon aur netaon ne mehnat ki, sangathan banaya, janta ke muddon par sangharsh kiya, lekin hum apni mehnat vote mein tabdeel karne mein kamyab nahi hue (The verdict of people in a democracy is acceptable to everyone. Our workers and leaders worked hard, built the organisation, raised public issues, but we could not succeed in turning our hard work into votes).”

She also pledged that the party will continue with its struggle in UP while sticking to the “agenda of positivity”.

The two Congress candidates who managed to win this time include Aradhana Mishra, who retained her seat from Rampur Khas in Pratapgarh district, and Virendra Chaudhary, who won from Pharendra seat in Maharajganj district.

The 47-year-old Congress Legislature Party leader in the outgoing Assembly, Aradhana Mishra, had accompanied Priyanka across the state on her women-centred campaign, called “Larki hun, lar sakti hun (I am a girl, and I can fight”.

Aradhana is the daughter of veteran UP Congress leader Pramod Tiwari, who had made a record of sorts by winning Rampur Khas constituency 9 times from 1980 to 2012. In 2014, when he became the MP, Aradhana won this seat in a bypoll.

In the 2017 polls, she won the seat for the second consecutive time, defeating the BJP’s Nagesh Pratap Singh by nearly 17,000 votes. The Congress then made her its Legislature Party leader in the state Assembly.

Before contesting the Assembly election, Aradhana, who completed her Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and Master’s in Business Administration, served as a block pramukh for three terms since 2001.

Considered to be close to Priyanka, Aradhana had accompanied her during her visits to the houses of women and other victims of various atrocities in several districts – including Hathras, Unnao, Umbha, Sidharthanagar and Lakhimpur Kheri – in recent years.

Virendra Chaudhary is a senior UP Congress leader, who has been contesting from the Pharendra Assembly constituency since 2012. In the 2017 polls, he was defeated by BJP candidate Bajarang Bahadur Singh by a slender margin. This time too, they had been locked in a neck-and-neck fight through the counting, with Virendra finally overcoming his incumbent rival to clinch the seat.