In Lucknow, after a marathon counting of more than 80 hours, Avanish Kumar Singh of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged victorious in the graduate constituency by a margin of 6,403 votes against sitting MLC Kanti Singh, whose family had held the seat for 18 years.

 

In Meerut, another graduate constituency dominated for 24 years by Hem Singh Pundhir of Madhyamik Siksha Sangh, BJP candidate Dinesh Goyal won by a huge margin of 28,769 votes.

 

The BJP has won three out of the six teachers' seats from Lucknow, Meerut and Bareilly-Moradabad.

 

This was the first time that the BJP had contested a teachers' constituency and its strong showing is likely to further impact "teachers' politics" in the state.

 

Among the four graduates' seats, the BJP won from Agra and Meerut, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) added to their tally in Allahabad-Jhansi and Varanasi divisions. Both the graduates' seats won by the SP were earlier held by the BJP, but the saffron party also won from Agra, which had earlier elected an SP candidate.

 

The result of the Lucknow graduate seat is still awaited.

 

While the BJP's victory in these elections has ended the decades-old dominance of family satraps, there were setbacks for the ruling party in Varanasi where the three-term sitting MLC Kedarnath Singh lost to Samajwadi Party debutant Ashutosh Sinha in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency.