Lucknow: The SP has borrowed a candidate from the little-known NISHAD (Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal) party for the upcoming byelection in Gorakhpur.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav announced at a pre-ss conference on Sunday that the SP candidate for Gorakhpur bypoll would be Pravin Kumar Nishad, son of NISHAD Party president Sanjay Nishad.
“The NISHAD Party and the Peace Party are supporting us, but Pravin Kumar Nishad will contest the bypoll on the SP symbol, which is the cycle,” Mr Yadav said.
NISHAD party president Sanjay Nishad and Peace Party president Ayub were present when Mr Yadav made the announcement.
Pravin Kumar, an engineer by profession, is a first time contestant and is confident of getting OBC votes. The NISHAD Party has one MLA in the UP Assembly.
Significantly, Gorakhpur has about four lakh Nishad voters. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Rajmati Nishad of SP had polled 2.26 lakh votes while Ram Bhual Nishad of BSP had finished third with 1.76 lakh votes.
Yogi Adityanath had won the seat for the fifth time with 5.39 lakh votes. Incidentally, no OBC candidate has ever won the Gorakhpur seat since 1952.
Mr Yadav, meanwhile, has announced Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel as his party candidate for the Phulpur seat where a bypoll is also to be held.
The Congress has already fielded Surhita Chatterjee Kareem, a lady medical practitioner, on the Gorakhpur seats and Manish Misra on the Phulpur seat.
The BSP, sources said, will not be contesting the byelection to Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats but it is not yet clear if the party will support SP or Congress candidates.
Meanwhile, Mr Yadav said that his party would contest the by polls with the intention of winning them. He said that he would use the BJP manifestos of the 2014 and 2017 polls to expose the doublespeak of the party.
NISHAD Party president Sanjay Nishad said that the problems of the Nishad community were similar to that of Muslims and if the two communities came together, they would emerge as a formidable force.
The Gorakhpur seat was vacated last year with the resignation of Yogi Adityanath, while Keshav Maurya’s resignation has led to the byelection in Phulpur.
