Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Jaya Prada lost from Rampur Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh to her old party colleague Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party by a margin of more than one lakh votes.
Khan secured 5.59 lakh votes, accounting for 52.71% of the vote share while Jaya Prada got 4.48 lakh votes. This was the first time that Khan contested the Lok Sabha elections. The Rampur Assembly segment has been his bastion since 1980 – he has won nine terms in the state Assembly from here. The Samajwadi Party won just five of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the BJP bagged 62 seats.
Jaya Prada had joined the BJP in March. She has represented the Rampur constituency as Samajwadi Party MP twice, from 2004 to 2014. Although Khan was crucial in Jaya Prada’s journey to the Parliament, the two had a fallout and Khan was expelled from the Samajwadi Party for trying to disrupt Jaya Prada’s re-election campaign in 2009.
Khan was later taken back into the party, but Jaya Prada was expelled from the party for supporting renegade leader, Amar Singh.
The campaigning for the seat was marked by personal attacks. The Election Commission had banned Khan from campaigning for 72 hours after he reportedly declared at a rally that the colour of “the current Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate’s” underwear is khaki. A case was filed against Jaya Prada too, after she warned Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati about Azam Khan’s “X-ray-like eyes”.
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