Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad won in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of 54,567 votes, according to Election Commission data on Tuesday.

The seat includes the Ayodhya Assembly segment.

Prasad has secured 5,54,289 of the 11,40,661 total votes counted. The sitting MP from Faizabad, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lallu Singh secured 4,99,722 votes.

In April, Singh had triggered a row with his alleged remarks that the BJP would need a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha to make amendments to the Constitution.

The Bahujan Samaj Party’s Sachidanand Pandey was a distant third with 46,407 votes of the total votes.

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As of 8 pm, the BJP was ahead in 33 seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the Samajwadi Party was ahead in 37 seats.

Faizabad had seen a voter turnout of 59.14% during the fifth phase of polling on May 20, down 0.55% from the 2019 general elections.

During the Lok Sabha election, the BJP cited the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya as one of its achievements in its second term in power, and criticised Opposition parties for not supporting it.

The Ram temple in Ayodhya is built on the site of the Babri mosque, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists in December 1992 because they believed that it stood on the spot where the deity Ram was born. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as new details are available.

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