BJP names candidates for bypoll seats, sets up exciting west Uttar Pradesh contest

LUCKNOW : Setting up an exciting contest in western U.P. by-polls to one Lok Sabha and two assembly seats scheduled for December 5, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday tactically named candidates that hinted at the ruling party’s intent to take on the state’s chief opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) in its bastions.

While the main fight is between the BJP and the SP, the BSP is yet to clear its stand on contesting these by-polls while the Congress has decided to stay away and focus on the forthcoming urban local bodies polls instead.

For by-polls to Mainpuri Lok Sabha, where the SP has named its party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav, a former MP, to stake claim to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s legacy whose demise caused the by-poll, the BJP avoided a “Jethani vs Devrani” (elder sister-in-law Dimple against younger sister-in-law Aparna Yadav), contest and tactically settled for Raghuraj Shakya, considered a loyalist of Mulayam’s brother and Akhilesh’s estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav.

Akhilesh Yadav (Karhal) and Shivpal Yadav (Jaswantnagar) are both MLAs from assembly segments that are part of Mainpuri Lok Sabha – a seat that BJP hasn’t won before. “Full respect to netaji but now ‘Kamal (lotus)’ will bloom in Mainpuri,” said deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya even as the BJP is now readying its campaigners for a heavy-duty campaign.

Mainpuri was among the 16 Lok Sabha seats that the BJP had failed to win in U.P. in the 2019 LS elections. However, despite the Lok Sabha seat eluding the BJP, the ruling party now has control of two of the five assembly segments (Mainpuri (Sadar) and Bhogni).

“It’s a fight for netaji’s legacy and by fielding a Shivpal loyalist, the BJP has cleverly tried to expose the fault lines in the Samajwadi Party’s first family. The big question now is if Shivpal ji will campaign for the SP. If he does, it would be a huge boost for the opposition party in a constituency where BJP’s loss margin had started reducing even when netaji contested and won 2019 LS polls. However, the SP probably would also have the sympathy factor as this is the first election after netaji’s demise,” said Irshad Ilmi, a political observer.

In Rampur (Sadar) assembly segment, another seat that BJP hasn’t won ever and from where SP veteran Azam Khan has won a record 10 times, the BJP has fielded Akash Saxena, a known Azam baiter, whose father Shiv Bahadur Saxena, a former minister of state, had won Suar assembly seat of Rampur on BJP ticket four times in the past.

Akash, the man responsible for filing several police cases against Azam and his clan, had also contested the 2019 Lok Sabha and then 2022 U.P. polls from Rampur (Sadar) and was comprehensively defeated each time by Azam.

The SP hasn’t named anyone on the assembly seat so far but with Azam Khan convicted in a 2019 hate speech case and hence disqualified as lawmaker, causing a by-poll, there are speculations that to ensure that the constituency stays with the SP, someone from Azam’s family would contest.

“No matter who contests, be it someone from the family or outside, we are ready,” said Rampur’s Lok Sabha MP Ghanshyam Lodhi, a former Azam loyalistturned-BJP leader who had won the seat in the June by-poll after Azam quit as MP following his win from Rampur (Sadar) assembly in the 2022 UP poll.