Lucknow, Nov 23 (IANS): Uttar Pradesh's ruling BJP, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, retained its primacy, securing six of the nine Assembly seats where bypolls were held this month with ally RLD winning the seventh, while the Samajwadi Party, with two wins, remains its principal rival, but is beset by smaller parties that dent its chances.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) continues to languish in the third position, or lower, as the Aazad Samaj Party-Kanshi Ram (ASP-Kanshi Ram) and the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) raced ahead of it in some seats. However, the Mayawati-led party still retains the capacity to hurt the prospects of the Samajwadi Party.

In the Katehari seat, Bharatiya Janata Party's Dharmraj Nishad secured 104,091 votes to defeat his nearest rival, SP's Shobhawati Verma by a margin of 34,514 votes. BSP's Amit Verma ended up third, with 41,647 votes.

Similarly in Majhawan, BJP candidate Shuchismita Maurya got 77,737 against her SP rival, Dr Jyoti Bind's 72,815 to win by a margin of 4,922 votes. The BSP's Deepak Tiwari was third with 34,927 votes, followed by the Aazad Samaj Party-Kanshi Ram's Shambhunath with 3,529 votes.

The BSP's Jitendra Kumar Singh came third in the Phulpur Assembly segment with 20,342 votes, whereas BJP's Deepak Patel got 78,289 votes to defeat SP's Mohammad Mujtaba Siddiqui by 11,305 votes.

In Meerapur, won by the Rashtriya Lok Dal's Mithlesh Pal, who got 84,304 votes, to defeat SP's Sumbul Rana by a margin of 30,796, the spoilers were Zahid Hussain of the ASP-Kanshi Ram who came third with 22,661 votes and AIMIM's Mohammad Arshad following him with 18,869 votes. BSP's Shahnazar was a distant third with 3,248 votes.

However, in Khair, BSP candidate Pahal Singh's 13,365 votes made no difference to the outcome as BJP's Surender Diler with 100,181 votes, defeated SP's Charu's Kain by a margin of 38,393 votes, nor in Ghaziabad where BJP's Sanjeev Sharma got 96,946 votes against his SP rival Singh Raj Jatav's 27,595 to win by a huge margin of 69,351 votes. BSP's Parmanand Garg was third with 10,736 votes and AIMIM's Ravi Kumar was in fourth place with 6,536 votes, followed by ASP-Kanshi Ram's Satyapal Chaudhary with 6,304.

In the Kundarki Assembly seat too, the BJP's Ramveer Singh with 170,371 votes, decisively outpaced his SP rival, Mohammad Rizwan, who won 25,580, by 144,791 votes. ASP-Kanshi Ram's Chand Babu was third with 14,201 votes, followed by AIMIM's Mohammad Varish with 8,111 votes and BSP's Rafatulla with 1,099.

The SP won the Karhal seat with Tej Pratap Singh netting 104,304 votes to defeat BJP's Anujesh Pratap Singh by 14,725 votes while BSP's Avinash Kumar Shakya got 8,400 votes and the ASP-Kanshi Ram's Pradip a distant fifth with 2,499 votes. In Sishamau, SP's Naseem Solanki got 69,714 votes and defeated BJP's Suresh Awasthi (61,150 votes) by a margin of 8,564 votes. BSP's Virendra Kumar was a distant third with just 1,410 votes.