Lucknow, Oct 24 (PTI) The Samajwadi Party’s decision to go solo in the November 13 bypolls to nine assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh sparked a flurry of political activities on Thursday with the ruling BJP and the opposition BSP announcing their poll picks even as the Congress opted to sit out of the triangular contest.
Both the BJP and the SP have fielded four OBC candidates against two from the BSP. The SP has also fielded four Muslims against the BSP’s two. The BSP has fielded four upper castes against the BJP’s three.
After Congress’s Thursday presser, in which party leaders declared that the INDIA bloc would contest the bypolls unitedly, the SP also declared candidates for the two remaining seats - Ghaziabad and Khair in Aligarh - that it had held back ostensibly to accommodate the Congress.
“We are not contesting but will support the SP in the bypolls. The INDIA bloc is united,” Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai told PTI.
He denied claims that as part of a strategy, Congress candidates would be contesting on a few seats on SP’s symbol.
“It’s not true at all. Congress is not contesting these elections but will support SP whose candidates will contest all the seats,” he said.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav shared on X a picture with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday and emphasised their shared commitment to protect the Constitution, reservation and social harmony.
“We have resolved to save the Constitution, reservation and harmony. (We will) build the country envisioned by Bapu, Babasaheb and Lohia,” the SP chief said in his post in Hindi.
The BJP left the Meerapur seat in Muzaffarnagar for its ally RLD, which fielded former lawmaker Mithilesh Pal (OBC) on the seat it had won in the 2022 polls.
The BJP put up candidates in all the remaining eight seats, an apparent slight to its other ally Nishad party that had staked claim to two seats - Majahawan in Mirzapur and Katehari in Ambedkarnagar.
These were the seats Nishad party had contested in 2022 UP polls in alliance with the BJP, winning Majhawan while losing Katehari.
With the Nishad party away, these seats would witness BJP’s Suchismita Maurya (OBC) taking on SP’s Mustafa Siddiqui and BSP’s Deepak Tiwari in Majahawan while in Katehari the competition will include Dharmraj Nishad from the BJP, Shobhawati Verma (SP) and Amit Verma - all OBCs.
Nishad has been a three-term lawmaker from BSP who joined the BJP ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh polls and his selection, like that of Suchismita, reflects BJP’s desire to promote its homegrown OBC cadre, a BJP leader told PTI.
After the apparent snub, Nishad party chief Sanjay Nishad, an Uttar Pradesh minister, who has been stating that their party’s alliance with BJP would remain true, has convened a party’s core-committee meet on Friday.
The SP that had earlier named seven candidates – Tej Pratap Yadav from Karhal, Naseem Solanki from Sisamau, Mustafa Siddiqui from Phulpur, Shobhawati Verma from Katehari, Jyodi Bind from Majhwan, Sumbul Rana from Meerapur and Mohammad Rizwan from Kundarki named two more on Thursday.
They are Sigh Raj Jatav (Ghaziabad) and Charu Kain (Khair).
The BJP candidates are – Ramvir Singh Thakur from Kundarki, Sanjeev Sharma from Ghaziabad, Surendra Diler from Khair (SC) and Anujesh Yadav from Karhal, Deepak Patel from Phulpur seat, Dharmraj Nishad for Katehari, Suchismita Maurya for Majhawan and Suresh Awasthi from Sisamau seat. The RLD named Mithilesh Pal from Meerapur as the alliance candidate.
The BSP candidates are Amit Verma (Katehari), Jitendra Kumar Singh (Phulpur), Shahnazar (Meerapur), Virendra Kumar Shukla (Sisamau), Avnish Kumar Shakya (Karhal), Rafat Ullah (Kundarki), Parmanand Garg (Ghaziabad), Deepak Tiwari (Majhawan).
“BSP has always followed the principle of ‘jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni hissedari’ and today’s list also follows the same principle,” UP BSP chief Vishwanath Pal told PTI.
The BSP is yet to name its ninth candidate in the Khair (SC) seat in Aligarh district.
Karhal, which falls in Mainpur district and is considered a bastion of SP since 1993, will see a face-off between Mulayam Singh Yadav’s grandson Tej Pratap Yadav and Anujesh Yadav, who is also related to the Saifai clan being brother in law of Dharmendra Yadav, a nephew of the SP founder.
In the 2022 assembly polls, Sisamau, Katehari, Karhal, Milkipur and Kundarki were held by the SP, while the BJP had won Phulpur, Ghaziabad and Khair, while its allies RLD won the Meerapur seat and Nishad Party emerged victor in Majhawan seat.
Eight of these seats fell vacant after their MLAs were elected as MPs to the Lok Sabha, while a bypoll is being held on the Sisamau seat due to the disqualification of SP MLA Irfan Solanki, who was convicted in a criminal case.
RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary described the INDIA Bloc’s decision to contest UP bypolls unitedly as a “face saving attempt”. Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya posted on X, “The victory of BJP and its ally RLD is certain in bypolls. The game of Parivar Development Authority (fake PDA) is over.” The PDA was coined by SP to denote representation of pichda, dalit and alpasankhyak (backward, dalit and minorities). “The Congress-SP alliance is doomed and none can save their ship from sinking,” Maurya added.
The bypolll results will be out on November 23. PTI CDN/ABN/KIS/MAN MAN ZMN
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