By IANS
Lucknow : Samajwadi Party nominee Neeraj Shekhar Singh, son of former prime minister Chandra Shekhar, was Wednesday elected to the Lok Sabha from his late father’s constituency Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, defeating the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Singh polled 295,735 votes while BSP’s Vinay Shankar Tiwari bagged 164,450 votes – a victory margin of over 131,000 votes.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress finished way behind. BJP’s former MP Virendra Singh Mast polled 22,723 votes. Rajiv Upadhyay (Congress) got 10,755 votes.
Chandra Shekhar (Samajwadi Janata Party) had won the Ballia seat in 2004 with the backing of the Samajwadi Party by a margin of nearly 91,000 votes. The BSP had then polled some 189,000 votes.
Both the BSP, which took power on its own in Uttar Pradesh last year, and the Samajwadi Party had made the Ballia election a prestige issue.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati and her predecessor Mulyam Singh Yadav addressed election rallies in the constituency. Several BSP ministers camped in Ballia in a desperate bid to snatch the seat from Chandra Shekhar’s family.