New Delhi : Far away from Gujarat, which is going for the second phase of polling to elect its new state assembly on Monday, Dec 5, all eyes are on Uttar Pradesh polity again.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has fielded his wife, Dimple Yadav, for the by-polls where voting is taking place in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat.
Late Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP founder and Akhilesh’s father, had won the seat five times since 1996 including the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Incumbent Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the BJP as a party are eyeing a win in this seat. This will not only give a booster to Yogi’s hold in the state; it will demoralise the opposition camp further in the country’s most populous state.
The BJP candidate is Raghuraj Singh Shakya. He is, incidentally, a former aide of Akhilesh Yadav’s politician uncle Shivpal Yadav.
Essentially, SP is banking on Mulayam’s legacy; but the absence of Mayawati-led BSP in the fray at the by-polls has opened windows of opportunities to eye Dalit votes.
In the social context, as immediate rivals of Yadavs — the Dalits could be leaning towards the saffron party.
Vitally yet again, Mainpuri has over 60,000 Muslim voters as well. The constituency is, of course, dominated by Yadav voters, who make up 4.5 lakh of the 17 lakh electorate. Shakyas are around 3.5 lakh, and there are about 2.6 lakh Dalits.
Akhilesh is the MLA from Karhal and Shivpal from the Jaswantnagar Assembly segments of the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat.
There are also by-elections to state assemblies on Dec 5 in Bhanupratappur (Chhattisgarh), Rampur and Katauli (Uttar Pradesh), Kurhani (Bihar), Padampur (Odisha) and Sardarshahar (Rajasthan).
Rampur assembly by-polls in Uttar Pradesh are also crucial. The election has been necessitated as SP veteran Azam Khan was disqualified as MLA after a court convicted him in a 2019 hate speech case.
The BJP wants to establish its ‘dominance’ in Rampur after having won the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency in June. For Azam Khan and Samajwadi Party, the fight is for honour and politics.
Asim Raja, an associate of Azam Khan, is in the contest, and BJP nominee is Akash Saxena, the son of a former party MLA Shiv Bahadur Saxena.
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