BJP declares 85 more candidates in UP
Turncoats, daughter of rebel MLA find place on new list
LUCKNOW : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday declared 85 more candidates for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Those who have been named include the daughter of a rebel party MLA from the same seat that her father, who has since defected to the Samajwadi Party (SP), represented. The latest BJP list for Uttar Pradesh was announced shortly after chief minister Yogi Adityanath launched the party’s theme song “UP phir maangey bhajapa sarkar (UP again seeks BJP government).” Riya Shakya, an Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidate, is among the 15 women on the list of 85. She has been named the party candidate from Bidhuna assembly constituency in Auraiya, a seat held by her father Vinay Shakya, who was among the 14 BJP lawmakers, including three ministers to defect to the Samajwadi Party (SP) last week. The Samajwadi Party is expected to field a majority of BJP rebels on its symbol but has not named its candidate on the Bidhuna seat yet. If it does, the move would set up an interesting father-daughter contest on the seat, party leaders suggest. On January 11, Riya had attracted attention after a viral video in which she had claimed that her lawmaker father had been abducted, a claim subsequently denied by Auraiya police. With this, the BJP has now declared 194 candidates so far, including 26 women. The BJP’s new list comprises several turncoats, too. They include Ramvir Upadhyaya, who was among the Brahmin faces of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), from Sadabad assembly constituency in Hathras. The others on the list include rebel Congress lawmakers Rakesh Singh from Harchandpur and Aditi Singh from Rae Bareli (both recently embraced BJP). Nitin Agarwal, rebel Samajwadi Party lawmaker from Hardoi, who quit as deputy speaker in the UP assembly, among others, is also on the list. Hari Om Yadav, the SP’s Sirsaganj MLA who had joined the
Manish Chandra Pandey manish.pandey@htlive.com
BJP in Delhi a few days back, has also been fielded as a candidate. The list also includes former chief of UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (UP ATS) Asim Arun, a Jatav dalit, who recently quit the Indian Police Service (IPS) with nine years of his tenure remaining. He has been fielded from Kannauj, a reserved seat. When he quit, Arun was the police commissioner of Kanpur and his joining had come in for sharp criticism from the opposition Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, echoing a popular school of thought that there should be a cooling off period for bureaucrats before they enter politics. Another Dalit IPS officer Brij Lal, who joined the BJP after retirement, is already a Rajya Sabha member from UP. Both of them have been picking holes in the Samajwadi Party list of candidates that they claim comprises people with a tainted record. Under pressure, the Samajwadi Party had also changed its candidate Nahid Hasan in Kairana after he was arrested under the Gangsters Act. The SP has since named Hasan’s sister Iqra from the seat. The UP polls start from the state’s western region, where Union home minister Amit Shah would hold door-to-door campaign in Kairana on Saturday. The BJP has fielded Mriganka Singh in Kairana. She is the daughter of party veteran the late Hukum Singh who had flagged the Hindu exodus “palayan” theory that became a poll plank in 2017. The issue is still being raised in the 2022 UP elections. Also, BJP chief JP Nadda would be in Bijnor and Gajraula on Saturday. The BJP has also finalised its seat-sharing arrangement with its OBC allies, Apna Dal and Nishad party, though it has not made the details official yet.