Ram Prasad Chaudhary Wins Basti With A Margin Of 1,00,994 Votes

In the Basti Lok Sabha seat, Ram Prasad Chaudhary of the Samajwadi Party won the Lok Sabha elections with a margin of 1,00,994 votes and secured a total of 527005 votes, whereas Harish Chandra Alias Harish Dwivedi came second securing a total of 426011 votes.

Ram Prasad Chaudhary embarked on his political journey as a Member of Parliament in the 9th Lok Sabha, representing Khalilabad in the Sant Kabir Nagar district as a member of the Janata Party. From 1993 onwards, he served as the MLA of Kaptanganj in the Basti district for five consecutive terms until 2017.

During the 2017 elections for the Seventeenth Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh, he was defeated by the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Chandra Prakash Shukla by a margin of 6,827 votes.

In the 2019 general elections, he contested as a candidate of the SP and BSP (Mahagathbandhan) from the Basti Lok Sabha seat. However, he was unsuccessful in the election, losing to the BJP’s Harish Dwivedi by a margin of 30,354 votes.

In November 2019, BSP leader Mayawati expelled Chaudhary and three former MLAs from the party due to allegations of indiscipline and anti-party activities. Following his expulsion, Chaudhary, along with his colleagues, joined the Samajwadi Party in Lucknow in the presence of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav.

Harish Dwivedi was the incumbent MP of the Basti Lok Sabha constituency. In the 2014 Indian general election, he got a Lok Sabha ticket to Bharatiya Janata Party and he was elected for the first time as Member of Parliament. He defeated Samajwadi Party candidate Brij Kishor Singh “Dimpal” by a margin of 33,562 (3.20%) votes and in the 2019 Indian general election, he was elected Member of Parliament for the second time from Basti Lok Sabha constituency. He defeated Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Ram Prasad Chaudhary by a margin of 30,354 (2.88%) votes.

(This article is part of the Timeline internship program)