Campaigning for the bypoll to Ghosi assembly seat in Mau district ended on Sunday evening.
The polling will be held on September 5.
The Ghosi bypoll in eastern Uttar Pradesh has turned into an electoral battle between the National Democratic Alliance and the newly-formed Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) with only two major candidates in the fray. The high-voltage campaign was led by senior leaders from both sides.
The Ghosi assembly seat was vacated by former minister Dara Singh Chauhan, who won the seat on a Samajwadi Party ticket in 2022 but quit the party in July this year and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Chauhan, an Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader who initially quit the BJP months before the 2022 assembly elections only to return to the BJP fold, is also being backed by NDA constituents Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), NISHAD party and Apna Dal (Sonelal).
Facing him is SP’s Sudhakar Singh is backed by the Congress, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) and Janata Dal (United), making him the de facto INDIA bloc candidate. Singh is also supported by Suheldev Swabhiman Party (SSP), a splinter group of the SBSP.
The third force in UP politics, the Bahujan Samaj Party, has neither fielded a candidate nor has it extended its support to either aspirant.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav displayed a show of strength by campaigning in Ghosi earlier this week while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath hit the ground on September 2.
On the NDA side, SBSP extensively campaigned for the BJP candidate.
Chauhan won the Ghosi seat as an SP candidate in 2022 by 22,000 votes. In 2017, BJP’s Phagu Chauhan had won this seat by 7,000 votes. SP leaders maintain that if the polls are free and fair, the SP candidate will sail through easily.
However, campaigning for the BJP candidate, Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Brajesh Pathak said: “The SP candidate is going to forfeit his deposit and the BJP will have a landslide victory.
The SP and allies are also dubbing Chauhan as an outsider to Ghosi and Sudhakar Singh a native. Sudhakar Singh is a two-term MLA who last won from Ghosi seat in 2012. Before 2022, Dara Singh Chauhan had never contested from the Ghosi seat.
