UP election result: SP candidate who guarded EVM room with binocular, loses

Samajwadi Party leader Yogesh Verma who became a viral sensation after videos and pictures of him guarding EVM strong rooms with a binocular had gone viral, lost the 2022 assembly elections from Hastinapur. 

Verma lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party's sitting MLA Dinesh Khatik by 7,312. The Samajwadi Party leader polled 1,00,275 votes as compared to the winning BJP candidate who bagged 1,07,587 votes. Archana Gautam, beauty pageant winner who contested the polls as a Congress candidate, got 1,519 votes.

Verma had last won the seat on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket in 2007. He then unsuccessfully contested the 2012 polls as a Peace Party candidate. 

Just day after the exit polls predicted the Bharatiya Janata Party sweeping the UP Assembly polls, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav had alleged that the EVMs were being tampered with in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi. 

It was then the video of Yogesh Verma had started doing rounds on social media, standing atop a jeep and keeping a vigil at the EVM strong room through a binocular. 

The Samajwadi Party won 111 seats in the 403-member assembly. Its alliance partners RLD bagged eight seats while Om Prakash Rajbhar's SBSP bagged six seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies won 273 seats. 

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