The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party fielded Union Minister of State for Law and Justice SP Singh Baghel against Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav from Karhal in the upcoming UP assembly elections.
On Monday, SP Singh Baghel filed his nomination papers.
Baghel (61) is a Lok Sabha member from Agra.
After filing his papers, Bagel said that the people of Karhal and Jaswantnagar had been getting step-motherly treatment from the SP.
Karhal is a SP bastion and Jaswantnagar is represented by Akhilesh Yadav's uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav.
"I am here to contest against Akhilesh and the SP. I am here to get people justice and I am assuring people that I will free them from gundas," he said.
The Lok Sabha MP said that he was fighting polls for development. "I have fought polls so many times against this family. Will defeat him (Akhilesh),” he said.
Baghel is an old confidant of SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav. Formerly a head constable with the UP Police, Baghel later worked as personal security officer of Mulayam Singh Yadav when the latter was the chief minister of UP in 1993-95 and later the defence minister in the governments headed by HD Deve Gowda and Indra Kumar Gujaral.
As Baghel developed political ambitions he was fielded as SP candidate from Firozabad in 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Later he switched loyalty and joined Bahujan Samaj Party and was nominated to Rajya Sabha. In 2017, he joined the BJP and was elected to the assembly from Sikandrarau in Hathras district. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections he was elected to Lok Sabha from Agra.
Meanwhile on Monday, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav filed his nomination papers from Karhal assembly seat, which is part of Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency represented by Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Akhilesh will be contesting his first-ever assembly election this time and he is currently an MP from Azamgarh.
So far only two members of the Yadav clan, Akhilesh and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav have filed nomination papers for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
"First of all, I want to thank the people of Mainpuri and people of the organisation, who have given me a chance that today I have filed nomination from Karhal for contesting the elections," the SP chief said after filing nomination papers.
"This nomination is a mission as this UP election will write the country's history for the next century. Let us take part in this movement of positive politics with progressive thinking and defeat negative politics, and remove it too. Jai Hind!" Akhilesh tweeted in Hindi some time later.
Karhal will go to polls in the third phase of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh elections on February 20. The Karhal constituency is just four kilometres from Saifai, the native village of SP patron Mulayam Yadav. Except for 2002, the constituency has been won by the SP since 1993. In the 2002 assembly elections, sitting MLA Sobaran Singh had contested on a BJP ticket, but thereafter; he joined the SP and won elections three times consecutively.
Karhal has about 3.7 lakh electorate including 1.4 lakh Yadavs, 34,000 Shakhyas and around 14,000 Muslims.