BJP wins all 8 seats in Lakhimpur Kheri

Notwithstanding the political heat generated over the Tikunia violence which had left four farmers among eight people dead ahead of assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party made a clean sweep by winning all eight seats in Lakhimpur Kheri.

In the results declared on Thursday, the BJP posted an impressive victory in Nighasan assembly seat where violence had erupted during farmers' agitation on October 3.

BJP's Shashank Verma defeated his closest Samajwadi Party rival R S Kushvaha by 41,207 votes in Nighasan.

Lakhimpur Kheri had been one of the key attack points of the Opposition parties such as the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress against the BJP in the run up to the polls.

Eight people, including four farmers, were killed in a violence that erupted in the Tikunia area of the district on October 3 last year.

Union Minister Ajay Mishra's son Ashish Mishra is one of the key accused in a case related to the killing of farmers.

He was granted bail by the state high court last month.

The incident had also led to immense anger among the farmers and the incident was expected to have a bearing on the assembly results but the BJP candidate polled an impressive 1,26,488 votes in Nighasan.

Among the other seats, BJP's sitting MLA from Pallia Harvinder Kumar alias Romi Sahni defeated SP's Preetinder Singh by a margin of 38,129 votes.

Gola seat was taken by Arvind Giri who defeated Vinay Tiwari of SP by 29,294 votes while the Srinagar seat was won by Manju Tyagi who defeated SP's Ramsharan by 17,608 votes.

The Dhaurhara seat was won by BJP's Vinod Shankar Awasthi who defeated SP's Varun Singh by 24,610 votes and Lakhimpur seat was won by Yogesh Verma who defeated SP's Utkarsh Verma by 20,578 votes.

Kasta seat was bagged by BJP's Saurabh Singh who defeated Sunil Lala of SP by 13,817 votes and Mohammadi seat was won by Lokendra Pratap Singh who defeated Daud Ahmed of SP by 4,871 votes.