Election campaign for the bypoll to Gola Gokrannath assembly seat in Lakhimpur ended on Tuesday evening. The polling will be held on November 3 while the votes will be counted on November 6. The by-election was necessitated by the death of BJP MLA Arvind Giri, who succumbed to a heart attack on September 6. Giri had been elected to the UP Assembly from this seat for five consecutive terms.
The November 3 bypoll to the Gola Gokarnanath assembly seat will witness a straight fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party. The BSP and the Congress have not fielded their candidates. The BJP candidate is Arvind Giri’s 26-year-old son Aman Giri while the SP will be represented by former MLA Vinay Tiwari.
Taking no chances in the low-profile contest, the BJP has deployed a number of ministers to campaign for Aman. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath campaigned here on Monday while Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav was conspicuous by his absence. He had also stayed away from the bypolls to Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats held in June last.
UP cabinet minister Suresh Kumar Khanna and minister of state Baldev Singh Olakh campaigned in the constituency, addressed public meetings and held door-to-door campaigns.
Suresh Rahi and Satish Sharma, both UP ministers of state, also campaigned in the constituency. BJP state president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary and Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak also campaigned in the constituency, as did Union minister of state Kaushal Kishore.
Significantly, BJP’s local MP and Union minister of state Ajay Mishra stayed away from the campaign. A BJP leader in Kheri said, “The party has engaged Mishra in Gujarat elections and he is busy there.”
Local SP leaders were hopeful party president Akhilesh Yadav would turn up for the campaign before it concluded. District president Rampal Singh Yadav said SP state president Naresh Uttam and various leaders of the party had already campaigned for Tiwari.
“Large parts of the constituency were affected by floods. In the campaign, we raised the failure of the BJP government in providing relief to people in affected areas as a big issue,” Rampal said.
According to BJP sources, the party fielded Aman to encash sympathy for him. “His father Arvind Giri had developed a very good reputation in the constituency, and was elected MLA for five terms. People have strong sympathy for his family after his death. It could be an advantage in these polls,” a BJP leader in Lakhimpur Kheri said.
This by poll will be Aman’s entry into politics. A law graduate, he had earlier accompanied his father in political activities and handled his election management in the 2022 polls, but was not active in the BJP, sources said.
Arvind Giri was elected MLA in the 2022 and 2017 elections as a BJP nominee. Earlier, he was elected MLA on the SP ticket for three terms — in 1996, 2002 and 2007 — from the Haiderabad seat that was renamed Gola Gokarannath after delimitation. In 2012, he contested on a Congress ticket but lost. He had later joined the BJP.
SP’s Vinay Tiwari (52) had won the seat in 2012. Although the SP reposed trust in Tiwari in 2017 and 2022, he lost to Arvind Giri on both occasions.