Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav will visit Azamgarh, his former Lok Sabha constituency, to meet party MLA Ramakant Yadav who is presently in jail.
Ramakant Yadav is also a former MP from Azamgarh.
Akhilesh Yadav is visiting Azamgarh two months after the defeat of the Samajwadi Party candidates in bypolls to Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats. Both the seats were wrested by the Bharatiya Janata Party from the Samajwadi Party.
Sources in the SP said that Akhilesh Yadav was concerned about a possible dent in the party’s Yadav vote base in the Azamgarh region after his cousin and party candidate Dharmendra Yadav was defeated from the constituency by BJP’s nominee Dinesh Lal Yadav, the Bhojpuri actor-singer popularly known as Nirahua, in a close contest.
It was Akhilesh’s own seat that he vacated after getting elected to the assembly earlier this year.
The SP chief’s Azamgarh visit is aimed at ensuring that the party’s core Yadav vote bank remains intact in the Azamgarh belt.
SP’s Azamgarh district president Hawaldar Yadav said Akhilesh Yadav would meet Ramakant in the Azamgarh district jail on August 23, even as he claimed that the meeting would not have any connection with the party’s by poll loss.
Ramakant Yadav is currently an SP MLA from Phoolpur Pawai constituency in Azamgarh district. He had surrendered in a local court last month in a 24-year-old case of attempted murder. Adding to his woes, the court sent him to judicial custody in connection with a spurious liquor case registered in February this year.
Ramakant Yadav, a five-term MLA from Phoolpur Pawai and a four-time MP from Azamgarh, has been a history-sheeter with around two dozen cases against him. Though his son Arun Kumar Yadav was the incumbent BJP MLA from Phoolpur Pawai, the SP fielded Ramakant from the seat in the 2022 assembly elections, even as the saffron party denied ticket to Arun. The SP’s move to cash in on his grip on the constituency paid off.
The SP has defended Ramakant and accused the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government of “harassing” him.
“If Akhilesh meets Ramakant in the jail it will send a positive message to Yadav voters and the party workers, who are demoralised after losing Lok Sabha bypolls to the BJP,” the sources said.
Ramakant belongs to a strong political family that has influence over Azamgarh and adjoining districts of eastern UP. His eldest brother Lallan Prasad is a seven-time pradhan of Sarwa village in Azamgarh while his second brother Umakant Yadav is the former MP of Machhalisahr in Jaunpur district.