The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday threw the political dice in Uttar Pradesh as it pitted former MP Raghuraj Singh Shakya against Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav in Mainpuri and fielded Akash Saxena in Azam Khan’s Rampur seat. Bypolls are set to be held in December in the Lok Sabha seat of Mainpuri and the assembly seat of Rampur.
The announcement assume significance as Shakya was once a close associate of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav. Shakya, a former SP MLA from Etawah, will now take on Akhilesh’s wife Dimple in Mainpuri. He had resigned from the SP following a rift with the Yadav family in 2016, and later joined Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) floated by Shivpal. However, just before the 2022 assembly elections, Shakya switched to the BJP.
On the other hand, BJP’s Rampur candidate Akash Saxena is the main complainant in the hate speech case against Azam Khan. He had contested against Azam in the 2022 assembly elections but lost by a margin of over 55,000 votes. A known critic of the Khan family, Saxena had complained against Azam’s son Abdullah.
He accused Abdullah of submitting the wrong date of birth certificate while contesting 2017 assembly elections from Suar. The Allahabad high court eventually set aside Abdullah’s assembly membership with effect from December 16, 2019.
Similarly, in Khatauli assembly seat, the BJP fielded Rajkumari Saini, wife of BJP MLA Vikram Saini. Vikram got disqualified after his conviction in 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Pitted against RLD’s Madan Bhaiyya, Rajkumari has been the gram pradhan of Kawal village in Muzaffarnagar between 2005 and 2010.
Local reports quoted its sources in the BJP as saying that the Saini family enjoys considerable support in the assembly seat having substantial population of OBCs, Jats and Gurjar.
The BJP also named its nominees for the bypolls to one assembly seat each in Bihar, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. It has fielded Kedar Prasad Gupta from Kurhani in Bihar, Ashok Kumar Pincha from Sardarshahar in Rajasthan and Brahmanand Netam from Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh.
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