BJP announces bypoll nominees for UP and Bihar
Fielding a brahmin from the Gorakhpur seat is seen as an outreach by the BJP to a community considered its core votebank.
New Delhi: Getting ready for crucial byelections for two Lok Sabha seats to be held next month in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP on Monday announced its candidates. Upendra Shukla has been given the ticket for Gorakhpur, while Varanasi’s former mayor Kaushalendra Singh Patel will stand from Phulpur. Both seats are regarded as prestigious as Gorakhpur was earlier represented by chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Phulpur by deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. The BJP also announced its candidates in Bihar, naming Pradeep Singh as its nominee for the Araria Lok Sabha bypoll and Rinki Pandey for the Bhabua Assembly byelection.
Interestingly, it will be for the first time in nearly three decades that someone not from the Gorakhnath Math will contest for the prestigious parliamentary seat. Yogi Adityanath won the seat five times, and prior to that it was his guru Mahant Advaityanath since 1989.
The byelection will be held on March 11, and the counting of votes will take place on March 14. Tuesday is the last date for candidates to file their nomination. Fielding a brahmin from the Gorakhpur seat is seen as an outreach by the BJP to a community considered its core votebank.
While saffron poll managers are confident in Gorakhpur, it will be a tough contest for the BJP candidate in Phulpur, which is seen as the stronghold of the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samjawadi Party. The BJP won this seat for the first time in 2014. Unlike the Gorakhpur region, that is considered a stronghold of the saffron party, even the Assembly segments under the Phulpur parliamentary seat have seen either SP or BSP MLAs untill 2017. However, saffron poll managers claim that with both the SP and the Congress fielding candidates separately, the vote split will benefit the BJP.
The Araria byelection in Bihar will be a litmus test for Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) after his conviction in the fodder scam cases. The seat fell vacant after the death of RJD legislator Mohammed Taslimuddin. Pradeep Singh, a former Araria MP, had lost to the RJD’s Taslimuddin in 2014.