Lucknow, Aug 3 (PTI): Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday slammed the BJP over its poor performance in the recent by-polls, asserting that this marks the beginning of change.

Calling it a combined result of the youth's unity and outrage stemming from various other issues, he said, "Even the BJP's safest and most traditional seats will no longer be able to save them from defeat." In a lengthy post on X in Hindi, Yadav said the BJP's crisis will soon go beyond (electoral) loss. They will struggle to find anyone willing to accept a party ticket even if they search using drones and binoculars.

The former chief minister congratulated all the winning candidates and termed it the beginning of change.

He said, "God Himself has brought down those who harboured the arrogance of making God dance. He has knocked those who deemed themselves superior to the Divine off their moving vehicle, and simultaneously broke their arrogance." This is the combined result of the youth's unity and the outrage of their guardians, stemming from various issues, including exam paper theft, theft of offerings, inflation and assaults of every kind against the nation's Gen Z, he said.

Meanwhile, the public is saying that if the national president couldn't secure a victory in the assembly election, the state president wouldn't even be able to manage the campaign effectively, he said.

"This is a double defeat for the double-engine government," Yadav asserted.

The BJP on Monday faced defeats in assembly by-polls in Bankipur of Bihar, where Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor wrested the seat vacated by the ruling party chief Nitin Nabin, as well as in Madhya Pradesh's Datia.

The victory of Kishor, whose fledgling Jan Suraaj Party had failed to open its account in the 2025 Bihar assembly election, came as a shock for the BJP, which held the seat for over three decades, since 1995.

The seat was last held by BJP's national president Nitin Nabin, who resigned as an MLA to take up the national role, thus necessitating the by-election.

Kishor defeated his nearest BJP rival Neeraj Kumar by a margin of 19,324 votes. The celebrated poll strategist created history on his electoral debut when he garnered 64,151 votes, over Kumar, a low-key BJP youth wing leader.

The Congress retained the Datia assembly seat, with Ghanshyam Singh trouncing BJP's Ashutosh Tiwari by 6,016 votes in the bypoll held amid students' stir and differences in the saffron camp after party leader Narottam Mishra was denied a ticket.

The by-election was necessitated after a Delhi court in April sentenced sitting Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti to three years' imprisonment in a cheating case.

The BJP in Gujarat retained the Manjalpur assembly seat in Vadodara district, with its candidate Satish Govindbhai Patel defeating his Congress challenger and former minister Bhikhabhai Rabari by 30,630 votes.

The BJP's margin of victory was reduced compared to 1,00,754 in the 2022 assembly elections, when it scored a record victory in Gujarat.

By-polls in Vadodara were necessitated due to the death of sitting senior BJP MLA and former minister Yogesh Patel on June 2, 2026. PTI NAV SHS

(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)