BJP's Siddharth Nath Singh wins Allahabad (West)

ALLAHABAD: BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh today won from Allahabad (West), an assembly segment where the party has not been a force to reckon with until recently.

Delhi-based Singh, whose candidature had surprised all and even led to resentment among some of the cadres here who dubbed him an "outsider", defeated his nearest rival - Richa Singh of the Samajwadi Party - by a margin of more than 25,000 votes.

Moreover, two-time sitting BSP MLA Pooja Pal finished a distant third.

Singh's victory assumes greater significance in the light of the fact that the BJP had been a marginal face in Allahabad (West) till the 2012 assembly polls when it polled less than 10 per cent votes.

Hailing from a well-known political family, Singh is the maternal grandson of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, while his paternal uncle Chaudhary Naunihal Singh was a veteran Congress leader who had represented Allahabad (West) thrice in the 1980s.