Salempur Lok Sabha Constituency: Candidates for 2019 LS poll, past results, all updates

Salempur Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 80 parliamentary constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and covers parts of Deoria and Ballia districts. Currently represented by Ravindra Kushawaha, this was one of the many seats the BJP won for the first time in 2014. 

In 2014, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) dropped its sitting MP Ramashankar Rajbhar and instead fielded Ravi Shanker Singh alias Pappu who was defeated by Kushawaha with a margin of 2.32 lakh votes. 

Before Ramashankar Rajbhar's 2009 victory, Hari Kewal Prasad held the seat. He also holds the record of representing Salempur in Lok Sabha most times, four to be exact. He won the seat twice on Janata Dal ticket - 1989 and 1991 - and later won as a candidate of Samata Party, which later merged with Janata Dal (United) in 1998. 

In 2019 election, all parties have relied on caste equation in Salempur which has a sizeable number of backward caste voters - mostly from Rajbhar and Kushwaha community. While the BSP and the BJP have fielded Kushwaha candidates, the Congress has nominated a Brahmin nominee. 

BJP's Ravindra Kushawaha is pitted against BSP's RS Kushwaha and Congress' Rajesh Mishra. The last Congres candidate to win from Salempur was Ram Nagina Misra in 1984. 

The parliamentary constituency consists of five assembly segments: Bhatpar Rani, Salempur (Deoria district); Belthara Road, Sikanderpur and Bansdih (Ballia district).

In the last parliamentary elections in 2014, the BJP had won 71 seats in the state, securing 42.63 per cent of the votes. BJP ally Apna Dal bagged two more. The Samajwadi Party had won five seats with a vote share of 22.35 per cent. The BSP did not win any seat but secured 19.77 per cent votes. The Congress registered wins on two UP seats in 2014, bagging 7.53 per cent of the votes. 

UP is facing a triangular battle between the BJP, the Congress and BSP-SP-RLD alliance. Under the alliance's seat-sharing formula, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is contesting on 38 Lok Sabha seats of the total 80 seats, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party on 37 seats and the Chaudhary Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on three seats. The alliance has left two for Congress' Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi). 

In the seventh phase of Lok Sabha polling, 13 seats in Uttar Pradesh - Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushi Nagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj - are going for polls.

In 2014 election, all of these 13 seats were won by the BJP with Prime Minister Narendra Modi securing his victory from Varanasi. 

The counting of votes of the Lok Sabha election 2019 will be conducted on May 23.