All major political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, are sweating it out in the sultry heat to reach out to voters in Azamgarh and Rampur. Both the Lok Sabha seats will go to bypolls on June 23. The results will be announced on June 26.
The Samajwadi Party is faced with a huge task of retaining both the seats.
The bypoll has been necessitated following the resignation of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and senior SP leader Azam Khan. Both had contested the UP assembly polls earlier this year and won from Karhal and Rampur Sadar respectively to enter the state assembly.
Azamgarh, considered to be a bastion of SP, seems poised for a tough triangular battle ahead. The BJP has fielded Dinesh Lal Yadav aka Nirahua in an attempt to woo the Yadav voters while the BSP has fielded Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali in a bid to breach the Muslim votebank of SP.
The BJP veterans are trying to reach out to voters based on the ground reports of various cells. Preparations are being made to reach out to 10 lakh voters of the Lok Sabha constituency. The BJP has prepared a grand plan at booth level.
The SP leaders are busy in their ‘cycle yatras’ to reach out to the voters of Azamgarh. SP candidate Dharmendra Yadav said that the workers of various fronts of the party would lay the foundation of victory by reaching out to 10 lakh voters.
As per information, ten SP MLAs, along with different teams comprising youngsters, women, backward, scheduled tribe, farmers and minority fronts, are busy reaching out to people of Azamgarh.
Though SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has strategically put the bet on Dharmendra Yadav, his first cousin and former MP from Badaun, political pundits feel it will not be a smooth sailing in the wake of his estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav and sulking Muslim leadership of the party.
“The rift between Shivpal and Akhilesh is out in the open and it may dent the Yadav vote bank of the SP. Shivpal enjoys the sympathy and respect among the Yadavs who feel that he, along with Mulayam Singh Yadav, built the party with blood and sweat, but denied justice by Akhilesh. The family rift may play out in Azamgarh hitting the core Yadav vote base of the SP,” some leaders said.
Moreover, the BSP may succeed in wooing the Muslim voters as after the 2022 assembly polls, Akhilesh has been facing vexation of the Muslim leadership owing to his alleged indifference to the plight of Azam Khan who remained in jail for 27 months in connection with 89 cases lodged against him.
From 1989 to 2019, Azamgarh has been in the kitty of either SP or BSP. However, BSP founder-president Kanshiram had consolidated his party’s roots in Azamgarh even before the SP came into being by winning it in 1989. In 1991, the Janata Party had won it while in 2009, the BJP wrested it. The Azamgarh contest has more or less been bipolar between the SP and the BSP.