The Bahujan Samaj Party voters are likely to play a key role in deciding the winner in the Mainpuri bypoll, where former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Raghuraj Shakya are in a direct fight.
Dimple Yadav is trying to save her father-in-law Mulayam Singh Yadav’s bastion while the BJP is making efforts to wrest the constituency from the SP as it did in Azamgarh recently where SP, which was trying to save Akhilesh Yadav’s parliament constituency, faced a humiliating defeat.
“This (Mainpuri) is the Lok Sabha constituency where Mayawati’s BSP vote bank will decide who will become the Member of Parliament in the fight between BJP and SP. Actually, in Mainpuri more than 1.25 lakh votes belong to the Jatav community and more than 70,000 votes belong to different castes including Katheria,” a political analyst pointed out.
As per the experts, with Mayawati’s BSP not participating in the bypoll, the party supporters have the option to cast their vote for other candidates, and in such circumstances both SP and BJP face the challenge of wooing the core vote bank of the BSP.
In the last election in Azamgarh too, as per the experts, the BSP’s vote bank played a key role in the final election results. The BSP candidate got over two lakhs votes in Azamgarh ensuring the defeat of SP and a victory of BJP in a triangular fight. In Mainpuri, the party has been receiving a lot of sympathy after the demise of its patron Mulayam Singh Yadav.