LUCKNOW: A day ahead of the last date for filing nomination papers, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday ended speculation by announcing candidates for eight out of the nine seats going to by-polls in Uttar Pradesh. However, the party has left the Meerapur seat in Muzaffarnagar for ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), but managed to field Mithilesh Pal, a party functionary, to contest from the RLD symbol.Meanwhile, the ruling BJP rejected ally Nishad Party’s demand for two seats — Katehari and Manjhawan. However, in Katehari, the party has fielded a candidate from the Nishad community.The 10th seat, Milkipur in Ayodhya, which was also to go to by-polls, was left out by the Election Commission due to an ongoing legal dispute. The last date for filing nominations is Friday, with polling scheduled for November 13.Notably, of the nine seats, four, Karhal, Kundarki, Katehari, and Sisamau were won by the Samajwadi Party (SP), three , Ghaziabad, Khair, and Phulpur by the BJP, and one each by the Nishad Party and RLD, Manjhawan and Meerapur, respectively in the 2022 Assembly elections.In light of the ruling party’s poor performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls, where OBC and Dalit voters drifted away from it, the BJP has cautiously expressed confidence in four OBC candidates to galvanise the community. This is particularly important with the state assembly elections just two-and-a-half years away, as the OBC community has historically been a decisive factor in Uttar Pradesh politics. Of the remaining four candidates, two are Brahmins, one is a Thakur, and one comes from a Dalit background. Notably, the party has set up a Yadav-versus-Yadav contest in Karhal by fielding Anujesh Yadav, the brother-in-law of SP MP Dharmendra Yadav (cousin of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav). Karhal, a traditional SP stronghold, was previously represented by Akhilesh Yadav, who vacated the seat after being elected to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj. Akhilesh has chosen his nephew, Tej Pratap Yadav, to contest from the seat.Anujesh Yadav and his wife Sandhya (Dharmendra Yadav’s sister), the former Zila Panchayat president from Mainpuri, had switched to the BJP in 2017.In Kundarki, a Muslim-dominated seat in Moradabad, the BJP has fielded Ramvir Singh, a Thakur. Singh, a former district general secretary, contested the same seat in the 2012 and 2017 Assembly elections but lost both times to SP’s Mohammad Rizwan.In Ghaziabad, considered a BJP stronghold, the party has fielded its district president Sanjiv Sharma, a Brahmin, making his electoral debut.In Khair, a reserved seat in Aligarh, the BJP has fielded Surendra Diler, a Valmiki Dalit and the son of former BJP MP from Hathras, Rajvir Diler, who passed away in April this year.In Phulpur, the party has fielded Deepak Patel, son of Keshari Devi Patel, the former Phulpur MP. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the party replaced Keshari Devi with Pravin Patel, who won the Phulpur seat.In Katehari, the BJP has fielded Dharmaraj Nishad, a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) turncoat who joined the BJP just before the 2022 Assembly elections. Nishad, a three-time BSP MLA, won the seat in 1996, 2002, and 2007.In Manjhawan, the party has fielded Suchismita Maurya, who won the seat in the 2017 elections by defeating BSP’s Ramesh Bind with a margin of nearly 42,000 votes.In Sisamau, where the by-poll was necessitated by the conviction of SP MLA Irfan Solanki in a criminal case, the BJP has fielded Suresh Awasthi. Awasthi contested Sisamau in 2017 but lost to Solanki by a margin of around 5,000 votes. He also contested the 2022 Aryanagar seat in Kanpur but lost to SP’s Amitabh Bajpai by around 8,000 votes. Meanwhile, both the SP and BSP also released their lists of candidates on Thursday. The SP announced candidates for the Ghaziabad and Khair seats after failing to reach a seat-sharing agreement with its INDIA bloc partner, Congress. The BSP also announced candidates for eight of the nine seats going to polls on November 13.In Ghaziabad, the SP repeated its strategy of fielding a Dalit on an unreserved seat, as it did in Ayodhya in the recent Lok Sabha polls, by fielding Awadhesh Prasad against the BJP’s Lallu Singh. Awadhesh Prasad defeated the BJP candidate by over 50,000 votes. Similarly, in Ghaziabad, the SP has fielded Singh Raj Jatav, and in Khair, a reserved seat, Akhilesh Yadav has fielded Dr. Charu Kain.Of the eight candidates declared on Thursday, the BSP has given preference to OBCs by fielding five OBC candidates. In Phulpur and Ghaziabad, the party has replaced its Dalit candidates with OBC candidates, clearly indicating its focus on consolidating OBC votes. Additionally, the party has fielded two Muslim candidates in Meerapur and Kundarki, and two Brahmins — Virendra Kumar Shukla and Deepak Tiwari — from Sisamau and Manjhawan, respectively.
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