New Delhi: “Nobody saw it coming,’ says Gorakh Nath, the former Bharatiya Janata Party MLA whose petition in the Allahabad High Court became the reason why the Election Commission has decided not to hold the much-anticipated by-poll in Ayodhya’s Milkipur seat.

Nath won from Milkipur in 2017 but after losing his seat five years later filed an election petition challenging the election of the victor Awadhesh Prasad of the Samajwadi Party. On October 15, as Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar declared dates for the upcoming Assembly elections and bypolls, it was expected that he would announce the schedule for the 10 vacant seats in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.

However, to everyone’s surprise, including Nath’s, Kumar said that bypoll elections would be held only on nine seats. Milkipur would not go to the polls due to a pending election petition, said Kumar.

SP was ready to take on BJP in Milkipur

Since Milkipur was vacated by Prasad after he won a historic victory earlier this year from the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency, where the Ram Temple is located, earlier this year, the result in the Assembly segment would have a bearing beyond the constituency.

Reeling under the defeat in Ayodhya this summer, the BJP hoped to restore some of its pride by wresting back Milkipur, one of the five segments in Faizabad (Ayodhya).

The SP, on the other hand, wished to retain Milkipur to deliver another blow to the........

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