Kannauj Lok Sabha Election Results 2024 LIVE: Akhilesh Yadav wins with 1,70,922 margin, Kannauj back as SP bastion

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav brought back the Kannauj seat to Samajwadi fold after winning with a margin 1,70,922 votes, according to Election Commission data. He defeated BJP's Subrat Pathak on the final counting day on June 4.

A Samajwadi Party bastion since 1998, the Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency was breached by the BJP in 2019, when Subrat Pathak won by a margin of about 12,000 votes, narrowly defeating Dimple Yadav, wife of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. 

The constituency has been a traditional SP seat for decades. In 1967, Ram Manohar Lohia won the election as a Samyukta Socialist Party candidate, following which Janata Party held the seat twice.  

The seat then went to the SP and became their traditional seat due to the strategy of Akhilesh’s father and former UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav. 

Akhilesh Yadav has won from the Kannauj constituency -- which was also held by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav before him -- thrice and held it from 2000 to 2012, when he vacated it after becoming CM. His wife, Dimple Yadav, was then elected unopposed in a bypoll and won the seat again in 2014, before losing to Subrat Pathak in 2019.  

After maintaining suspense, Akhilesh Yadav filed nomination from the seat at the last moment to reclaim SP’s strong areas from BJP, which has made strong inroads in the last 10 years. BJP won the Firozabad, Badaun and Kannauj seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, while the late Mulayam Singh Yadav had won Manipuri. Dimple Yadav later won the by-poll from Mainpuri too. 

Samajwadi Party had won all these four seats in 2014, despite the Narendra Modi wave. 

Kannauj voted in the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 13. 

Top contenders 

The constituency comprises five Assembly segments -- Chhibramau, Tirwa, Kannauj, Bidhuna and Rasulabad -- and is not reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).  

BJP’s Subrat Pathak, SP leader and former Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav and BSP’s Imran Bin Zafar are the main contenders this time.  

Akhilesh Yadav represented Kannauj three times in a row in 2000 (bypoll), 2004, and 2009. 

Subrat Pathak, the BJP candidate for the seat, has compared his contest against Yadav to an India-Pakistan match and said that it will be an interesting one.  

In the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, BJP candidate Subrat Pathak emerged victorious in Kannauj, defeating SP candidate Dimple Yadav by a margin of 12,353 votes. Pathak polled 5,63,087 votes with a vote share of 49.35 percent, while Dimple Yadav received 5,50,734 votes (48.27 percent). 

Demographic composition 

According to data from the Election Commission, the Kannauj constituency had 18,74,824 voters during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections. Out of these, 10,25,930 were male voters, 8,48,829 were female voters, and 65 belonged to the third gender. In 2019, there were 3,396 postal votes in the constituency, with 4,477 service voters (4,281 men and 196 women).