Lucknow: The BSP Sunday got here out with two lists of a complete 25 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. In its first listing, of the 16 candidates declared, practically half — seven — are Muslims, a transfer that’s prone to harm the prospects of the Congress-SP opposition alliance within the state and assist the BJP.
Aside from the Muslim candidates, the Mayawati-led occasion, in its first listing, fielded 4 candidates from the higher caste, two from the OBC group, and three SC candidates from reserved seats.
The BSP’s seven Muslim candidates embrace Majid Ali from Saharanpur, Zeeshan Khan from Rampur, Shaulat Ali from Sambhal, Irfan Saifi from Moradabad, Mujahid Hussain from Amroha, Abid Ali from Aonla and Anis Ahmad Khan from Pilibhit.
Of those seats, the SP-Congress alliance has declared Muslim candidates on 4 — Saharanpur, Sambhal, Moradabad and Amroha.
Its two OBC faces embrace Dara Singh Prajapati from Muzaffarnagar constituency and Jat candidate Vijendra Singh from Bijnor.
The occasion additionally fielded 4 higher caste candidates — Shripal Singh, Rajendra Solanki, Praveen Bansal and Devvrat Tyagi — from Kairana, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Baghpat and Meerut, respectively.
From the reserved seats of Nagina, Shahjahanpur and Bulandshahr, it has declared Surendra Pal, Dodram Verma and Girish Jatav as its candidates, respectively.
The occasion has changed its sitting MPs in Saharanpur, Nagina and Bijnor, whereas its Amroha MP has already switched to the Congress.
The choice comes within the backdrop of BSP’s sitting Bijnor MP Malook Nagar making headlines for his assembly with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leaders and Saharanpur MP Haji Fazlur Rehman’s announcement that he received’t struggle elections however will assist any candidate difficult the BJP. Furthermore, the occasion had expelled its Amroha MP Danish Ali, who was declared because the Congress candidate for a similar seat Saturday.
Later within the night, the BSP declared its second listing of 9 extra candidates. This consists of candidates for Mathura, Fatehpur Sikri, Firozabad, Kanpur, Akbarpur and 4 reserved seats, together with Hathras, Agra, Etawa and Jalaun.
It has fielded Hembabu Dhangar from Hathras, Pooja Amrohi from Agra, Sarika Singh Baghel from Etawah and Suresh Chandra Gautam from Jalaun.
Baghel is a former MP from Hathras who turned the youngest lady MP from the RLD in 2009. She subsequently joined the SP earlier than becoming a member of the BJP in 2019. She has now been fielded by the BSP from Etawah.
Amrohi is the daughter of Satya Behan, a distinguished Congress chief who has served as a Rajya Sabha member prior to now. A humanities graduate from Delhi’s Woman Shri Ram School, Amrohi is the spouse of a businessman and the daughter-in-law of a former Haryana DGP.
Gautam, who retired as an engineer from the UP authorities, has been related to the BSP since 1983 and have become a convenor of the All India Backward and Minority Communities Staff Federation (BAMCEF) in 1989. He later turned the president of the SC/ST staff welfare samiti of state electrical energy company and led an agitation in the course of the implementation of the Mandal fee.
Dhangar is an Agra-based software program engineer and son of an outdated occasion horse Jagdish Prasad Dhangar who was related to occasion founder Kanshi Ram in the course of the early days of the BSP. From the opposite 5 seats, BSP has fielded higher caste candidates, together with three Brahmins, a Vaishya and a Rajput.
From Mathura, the BSP has fielded journalist and advocate Kamalkant Upmanyu whereas Ram Niwas Sharma, a former block head from the world, has been fielded from Fatehpur Sikri. Sharma had fought the meeting ballot from Fatehpur Sikri in 1993 on an SP ticket however misplaced and later distanced himself from politics after BSP denied him a ticket in 2012 meeting polls.
Businessman and advocate Satendra Jain Solly is the BSP’s candidate for Firozabad. Jain who belongs to the Vaishya caste, is a primary timer who is thought within the space for campaigning to lift voice towards open drains and water-logging of roads.
From the Kanpur seat, BSP has fielded Kuldeep Bhadauria, and for Akbarpur seat of Kanpur Dehat, it has named Rajendra Kumar Dwivedi. Bhadauria, who started his political journey collaborating in college students politics, has served as the final secretary of the scholars’ union of the DAV School within the space. He owns a enterprise and is an advocate too. In the meantime, Dwivedi, a businessman, has been related to the BSP for the previous 20 years.
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BSP & SP-Congress struggle on 4 seats
Whereas the Congress Saturday declared former BSP leaders Imran Masood and Danish Ali as its candidates from Saharanpur and Amroha, respectively, the SP Sunday declared sitting Lok Sabha MP S.T. Hasan as its candidate from Moradabad. The Akhilesh-Yadav-led occasion has already declared Shafiqur Rehman Barq’s grandson Zia-ur Rehman as its candidate from Sambhal.
Yadav had just lately met Azam Khan, senior SP chief and the occasion’s distinguished determine within the Muslim group, at Sitapur jail. Social gathering insiders reveal that discussions had been held relating to potential candidates for the Rampur constituency.
Out of the 16 candidates revealed by the BSP Sunday, the SP-Congress alliance has already disclosed candidates for the constituencies of Amroha, Saharanpur, Sambhal, Moradabad, Nagina, Pilibhit, Aonla, Shahjahanpur, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Baghpat, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, and Kairana.
Nevertheless, the alliance is but to finalise candidates for Rampur and Bulandshahr constituencies, which have been allotted to the SP and Congress, respectively.
Among the many seven Muslim candidates declared by the BSP thus far, 4 will struggle SP-Congress alliance candidates from the identical group on the seats of Amroha, Moradabad, Sambhal and Saharanpur.
Amroha will see Congress’ Danish Ali struggle Mujahid Hussain of the BSP, in Moradabad, BSP’s Irfan Saifi shall be up towards SP’s sitting MP S.T. Hasan, whereas in Saharanpur, the struggle shall be between Congress’s Imran Masood and BSP’s Majid Ali. In Sambhal, BSP’s Shaulat Ali will struggle SP’s Zia -ur Rehman Barq.
All 4 of those seats had gone to the SP-BSP alliance when the 2 events had tied up within the 2019 normal elections.
In response to analysts, the BSP has banked on a number of new faces because of a scarcity of excellent candidates. Furthermore, they add, by fielding Muslims candidates, its try shall be to get the group on its facet within the Muslim-dominated seats which can hurt the SP-Congress alliance.
“Mayawati has always fielded more Muslims than anyone else. Wherever Muslims are in majority, both SP and BSP want to field Muslim candidates and take advantage of the vote share. However, this usually results in counter-polarisation of votes, which might end up helping the BJP on such seats,” Mirza Asmer Beg, professor of political science at Aligarh Muslim College (AMU) advised ThePrint.
Beg famous that in 2019, the SP and the BSP had been preventing in alliance and received 15 seats in complete, of which, each the BSP and SP-RLD alliance have fielded Muslim candidates on 4.
“While earlier the parties were allies, they are now fighting as foes. For the BSP, defeating SP becomes the main target and it wouldn’t mind if the BJP, which is a national level party, goes on to win. The parties have had historical background of poaching each other’s constituency, whether it is Muslims which are generally known to be favouring the SP or the OBCs in their heydays, or even the SCs. This is more likely to help the BJP given the charged electoral atmosphere which is apparently in favour of BJP due to communal atmosphere and the charisma of being in power at the Centre,” he mentioned.
Beg added that the BSP fielding lesser-known faces like Shripal Singh, Rajendra Solanki, Praveen Bansal, Abid Ali, Shaulat Ali, Devvrat Tyagi, additionally exhibits that it’s going through scarcity of candidates as many will not be prepared to struggle for the occasion any extra.
“There may be financial reasons behind it given that fighting a Lok Sabha election entails a huge cost and also because established politicians don’t want to fight to lose given the BSP’s declining political fortunes. Moreover, it reflects that Mayawati has developed a trust deficit and is hence, fielding lesser-known candidates,” he mentioned.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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