UP Electorate Adopts Modi, Rejects Sons 

Hyderabad: Son of the soil and also son of the Neta, Akhilesh Yadav seems to have failed miserably in impressing upon the Uttar Pradesh electorate. The early trends of counting of votes in UP Assembly elections on Saturday indicated that the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance could not do any magic for the incumbent chief minister and the Modi magic worked wonders in the crucial state.

It was a combination of two prominent sons - Akhilesh and Congress party's Rahul Gandhi - and the most prominent daughter Priyanka Vadra, who claimed to be the real progeny of the state and rejected the claim of Modi as an adopted son.

It may be recalled that the election campaign in UP climaxed with the claims of son-of-the-soil and adopted son - when Prime Minister Narendra Modi called himself an adopted son of UP, SP-Cong countered it with UP did not need an adopted son as the son of the soil Akhilesh Yadav was looking after the mother so well. It was Priyanka Gandhi who vociferously rejected the claim of Modi in her speeches.

Modi represents Varanasi in Lok Sabha. After an impressive win in both Vadodara in Gujarat and Varanasi in UP in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Prime Minister retained the latter and resigned from the Vadodara seat.

In a 403-seat Assembly, the party was well past the magic figure of 203 with a lead in almost 280 seats in early rounds of counting. The SP-Congress combine was struggling to reach 100 while the lone fighter BSP lost its ground with below 10 percent of the total seats.

The final results may not be drastically different, which are expected to be declared by this afternoon.