In the villages of Pipraich, one of the five assembly segments in the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh, lie the clues to the BJP's shock bypoll defeat. In the recent bypolls, the BJP candidate's lead over his Samajwadi Party rival was only 243 votes in the segment, far smaller than the nearly 40,000 lead the BJP had in Pipraich over the collective vote share of the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Peace Party in 2014.
