“EC announces schedule for 9 seats, ignores Ayodhya’s Milkipur”. Here’s why

UP Bypolls 2024: The Election Commission on Tuesday announced the schedule for the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections as well as the by-elections in Uttar Pradesh. However, out of the 10 assembly seats available, the electoral body announced dates for only nine, leaving out the seat of Milkipur, Ayodhya.

Responding to why elections were not announced for Milkipur, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar stated that the seats in which by-election dates were not announced are those whose cases are in court. “The election petition (i.e. the matter has reached the court) relating to the seats for which the by-election dates have not been announced is filed in the court,” CEC Kumar said during the press conference on October 15.

According to the announcement made by the EC, by-elections will be held on November 13 for 47 assembly constituencies and one parliamentary constituency i.e. Wayanad, which fell vacant after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi won the Lok elections Rae Bareli’s Sabha. The results will be announced on November 20 along with the Maharashtra and Jharkhand Assembly polls.

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About Milkipur seat of Ayodhya

In a shocking defeat, the Bharatiya Janata Party lost the Ayodhya seat despite the party’s efforts to make the consecration of Ram Mandir a central issue in its Lok Sabha campaign. The party’s performance fell short of expectations, giving the Samajwadi Party a chance to wrest the seat from the BJP.

Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit leader and MLA from Milkipur, won the parliamentary elections in Faizabad with an unexpected result. He defeated BJP’s Lalloo Singh by over 50,000 votes. After this, he left the seat, following which the party fielded his son Ajit Prasad as its candidate in the polls.

Since then, Ayodhya’s Milkipur seat, which is part of the Faizabad parliamentary constituency, has been critical, representing a battle for prestige. While the BJP has been trying to regain the seat after the setback in Faizabad to compensate for the loss of momentum in the state, the Samajwadi Party is also under pressure to maintain its dominance and prove itself again.

However, it appears that the parties will have to wait to claim the seat as former BJP MLA Baba Gorakhnath, who lost the seat to Awadhesh Prasad in the 2022 Assembly elections, has filed a petition in the court. Gorakhnath won the seat in the 2017 legislative elections, but lost to Prasad in 2022 by 12,923 votes.