But here's the catch: On all seven occasions, the BJP candidate was the chief priest of the revered Gorakhnath Mutt. Gorakhpur is believed to be a stronghold of not the BJP but the mutt. Of all the 18 polls on this Lok Sabha seat, the mutt has won 10 times.

The mutt's association with active politics dates back to 1967 when its then head priest Digvijaynath (guru of Yogi Adityanath's guru) won the Lok Sabha seat as an independent candidate. After his unexpected death, Digvijaynath's disciple, Avaidyanath, fought the by-polls in 1970 and again, won. However, after Avaidyanath lost the next Lok Sabha elections in 1971 to a Congress candidate by over 37,000 votes, he stayed away from electoral politics for 18 years. But the Ram Janmabhoomi movement heralded his comeback in 1989 when he fought as a Hindu Mahasabha candidate and emerged victorious. Since then, it has been the mutt and the mutt alone that held the coveted seat till 2014 when Yogi Adityanath registered a historic victory. After 1989, the mutt priests fought all the elections - in 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 - on a BJP ticket.

So except for the period between 1971 and 1989, the mutt has had a near monopoly over the Lok Sabha seat for five decades. And till 2014, it had been consecutively winning nine times in a row!

This winning spree came to an abrupt end when the BJP fielded a non-mutt candidate this time. The seat was left vacant after Yogi Adityanath became Chief Minister.

This has led to a lot of post-poll speculation that the BJP played with fire by not considering Adityanath proposal of fielding a mutt representative in the first place. Many reports have hinted that Adityanath had wanted a mutt insider to be nominated as he believed that an outsider would dilute the political influ­ence of Gorakhnath Mutt. And that he eventually gave in to BJP president Amit Shah who calls the shots in these matters.

There are several theories that explain Shah's decision to field Upendra Dutt Shukla, an influential Brahmin leader, instead of a mutt leader. One speculation is that the party wants to check Adityanath’s stature, a theory supported by the manner in which Adityanath’s own sangathan - Hindu Yuva Vahini - is being trimmed and weakened by the day.

Another theory is that Shah wanted to placate the Brahmins of the state who have been miffed ever since a Thakur was made chief minister. Yogi Adityanath is an upper-caste Thakur by birth, his name was Ajay Singh Bisht before he entered into the order of Gorakhnath.

The move, however, has evidently backfired. The very seat that Adityanath won in 2014 by a huge margin of 3 lakh votes was lost to SP's Praveen Kumar Nidhad by 21,000.