Rashtriya Lok Dal, with 24 cases against him, lost from Gangapur in Varanasi District. He polled only two thousand votes and lost his deposit. Surendra Singh Patel of the Samajwadi Party won from this constituency with a lead of ten thousand votes (6%) over Neel Ratan Patel of Apna Dal. Apna Dal/Bharatiya Janata Party Pawan Pandey (Apna Dal, supported by Bharatiya Janata Party), who has 63 criminal cases pending against him (the highest number of cases pending against any candidate in this election) lost in Akbarpur, trailing the winner Ram Achal Rajbhar of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) by nearly twelve thousand votes (13%). Abhay Singh, a criminal-politician in jail charged with several murder cases against him, fielded his wife Sarita Singh on Apna Dal ticket from Bikapur seat in Faizabad district. At one point, he conducted a meeting with the sector-in-charge inside the jail. Abhay Singh has also been accused of making threatening calls to voters from inside the Faizabad jail. While Sarita Singh polled forty thousand votes, she came third, trailing the winner Jitendra Kumar Bablu Bhaiya (BSP) by 13 thousand votes (8%). A number of other criminal politicians mentioned in the press, such as the new bandit queen Seema Parihar, wife of the slain dacoit Nirbhay Gujjar, do not appear on the candidate lists, and may have been removed due to irregularities in their nomination papers or otherwise. Election result Exit polls suggested that the Bahujan Samaj Party may emerge as the largest party with between 110 and 160 seats; however, it far outstripped this prediction collecting an absolute majority of 206 seats out of a total 403 in the assembly. In contrast, Samajwadi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress were reduced very significantly. These elections were another major example of the pollsters getting it wrong at Indian Elections. In a similar pattern to the 2004 General Elections. The pollsters overpredicted the votes of the BJP. The results by party are as follows: Defections The BSP had won 98 seats in the last elections, but 33 MLAs defected to the Samajwadi Party in 2003, in a move that may have been illegal but was permitted by the then speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi. Blanked out In addition, 116 parties fielded candidates but failed to win a seat. The parties with more than 50 candidates fielded without outcome are: Indian Justice Party (121) Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party