Nine of the turncoats were fielded by the BJP and 10 by the Samajwadi Party.
The saffron party is assured of victory in eight of the ten seats in UP going by its dominant numbers in the state assembly.
Saharanpur recorded a turnout of 71.13 per cent, Bijnor 65.91, Moradabad 67.26, Sambhal 62.87, Rampur 64.26, Amroha 71.98, Budaun 59.24, Bareilly 61.67 and Shahjahanpur 59.34 per cent, a statement issued by the election office said in Lucknow on Tuesday.
The June 23 meeting of opposition parties, called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, will see anti-BJP players chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
The first information report (FIR) was registered according to the directives of the Election Commission on Covid-related norms, officials said.
The SBSP can impact around 10 Lok Sabha seats and 40 assembly seats in 7-8 districts in Uttar Pradesh, according to poll analysts.
Ansari said the Muslim community is now shedding the 'illusion' created by opposition parties like the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress.
The BJP took into consideration caste and regional aspirations while picking ministers in a bid to further consolidate its hold over the politically crucial state which sends the maximum of 80 members to Lok Sabha.
Keen to regain lost ground after the drubbing in Lok Sabha polls, Samajwadi Party supreme Mulayam Singh Yadav on Sunday met UP Ministers and asked them to ensure the party's victory in bypolls to 12 assembly seats.
He is the fourth chief minister from the saffron party to head the northern state. Before Adityanath, Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh of the BJP had served as Uttar Pradesh chief ministers.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
Addressing party workers at the state headquarters after the poll results and trends showed a clear BJP majority, he said the 'misleading' campaign run by the Opposition over the past 2-3 days have been set aside by the people who reposed faith in the good governance of the BJP.
Abhishek Singh, the son of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, a member of Legislative Assembly and former minister Vikram were prominent among 12 candidates who filed their nominations on Monday for the Lok Sabha elections.
The overall female strength has rised to 11 which is one of the highest.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
rivals Congress, JMM and TMC and Samajwadi Party.
Political observers are keen to see if the BJP will now be guided by its more firmly entrenched ideological dominance in picking a face solidly identified with its core planks, or if it will choose a person tilted more to its electoral calculations. Or, whether its pick will be an ode to its core supporters or a outreach to relatively new groups of votaries.
While Bharatiya Janata Party's countrywide vote share shot up by over 12 per cent at the expense of other parties, the chart throws some contrary pictures as parties like Bahujan Samaj Party got no seat in spite of third-highest vote share, but Trinamool Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam clinched over 30 seats each with less than 4 per cent vote share.
That would be three more seats than what the BJP won in 2014.
As many as 624 candidates are in the fray in this round of voting being held in Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur, Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Banda, and Fatehpur districts.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is headed for a big win in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council polls, bagging Barabanki and Ayodhya and leading in several other places. But it lost Varanasi to an Independent candidate.
Samajwadi Party leader Abdullah Azam on Sunday said the property given to the Rampur Nawabs for 'being loyal to the British' should be confiscated and that a movement in this connection will be launched soon.
Addressing a joint press conference after a meeting of 26 opposition parties in Bengaluru, Kharge said, "This was a very important meeting to save democracy and the Constitution in the interest of the people of the country."
The TDP snapped its ties with the BJP alleging neglect of the southern state and failure of the Centre to grant special category state status to Andhra Pradesh.
Nishad said he will meet senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, in Delhi on Monday to finalise the constituencies where the party will field its candidates.
SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav termed it as a 'ghaatey ka sauda' (loss-making deal) for the saffron party.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said that the party had always given paramount important to the pride of its party and Maharashtra and never sold its self respect for the sake of power.
Mayawati made it amply clear that her party will not enter into any alliance with the Congress.
To repeated questions, the SP chief asserted that the Congress was 'very much in the alliance'.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday held deliberations with Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda amid speculation about a reshuffle in the Union cabinet, an exercise Modi has not undertaken since forming the government for a second time in May 2019.
26 candidates in Amethi fray take away 60,545 votes; the difference between the victorious Smriti Irani and Rahul Gandhi is 55,120 votes.
With the Biju Janata Dal backing the National Democratic Alliance's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu, the vote share of the ruling dispensation has now crossed 50 percent, virtually paving the way for her election as the first tribal President and the youngest too.
It was curtains down on the high-decibel campaigning for the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as sparring among political rivals intensified during the last-minute canvassing on Monday.
RLD sources said that the party chief was "taken aback" by the SP's delay in announcing his name as the candidate for the Rajya Sabha elections.
'My God, what do I say? It's shocking!' 'They had 27 MLAs in 2012. And now they have just seven.' 'My party (the Apna Dal-S) contested 11 seats and won in nine.'
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
'If the Opposition does make a dent, it could encourage the efforts of regional parties to come together for the larger battle in 2024 and mark the beginning of a new anti-BJP politics.'
For the first time in his political career, he failed to carry his party to even a working majority -- and again, for the first time in his career, he finds himself in a situation where he cannot rule by dictatorial fiat, points out Prem Panicker.
'They know that if they do not tie up with the Congress, then the minorities will move to the Congress.'
