In a surprise move, the BJP has fielded Union Minister of State SP Singh Baghel against Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav from the Karhal Assembly constituency in the upcoming Assembly elections. Baghel on Monday filed his nomination papers.
Baghel (61) is the Lok Sabha member from Agra and the Minister of State for Law and Justice in the Union Government.
“I am here to contest against Akhilesh and SP. I am here to get people justice and I am assuring people that I will free them from Gundas,” Baghel said after filing his papers. He added Karhal and Jaswantnagar have got step-motherly treatment from the SP.
Karhal is an SP bastion and Jaswantnagar is represented by Akhilesh’s uncle Shivpal Yadav
Baghel is an old confidant of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Baghel worked as a head constable in the Uttar Pradesh police and later worked as a personal security officer of Mulayam when he was Chief Minister of UP in 1993-95 and later Defence Minister in HD Deve Gowda and Indra Kumar Gujaral Governments.
As Baghel developed political ambitions, the SP fielded him from Ferozaabad in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Later, he switched loyalty and joined the Bahujan Samaj Party, and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha. In 2017, he joined the BJP and was elected to Assembly from the Sikandrarau Assembly seat in Hathars district. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he was elected to Parliament from the Agra seat.
The Lok Sabha MP said he was fighting polls for development. “I have fought so many times against this family. Will defeat him (Akhilesh). His family has been defeated so many times.”
In the past, Baghel contested twice against Mulayam’s family members. He had contested against Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav and Akshay Yadav and had lost on both the occasions.
Akhilesh on Monday filed his nomination from the Karhal assembly seat, which is part of the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency represented by Mulayam. Akhilesh will be contesting his first-ever Assembly election this time. He is currently an MP from Azamgarh. So far only two members of the Yadav clan, Akhilesh and his uncle Shivpal, have filed nominations for the UP 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 am nominated from Karhal for contesting the elections”, said Akhilesh after filing nomination papers.
“This ‘nomination’ is a ‘mission’ as this UP election will write the country’s history for the next century. Let’s take part in this movement of positive politics with progressive thinking. Defeat negative politics, remove it too. Jai Hind!” Akhilesh said in a tweet in Hindi.
Karhal will go to the polls on February 20 in the third phase of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh elections. The Karhal seat is just four km from Saifai-- the native village of SP patron Mulayam.
Except for 2002, the constituency has been with the SP since 1993. In the 2002 Assembly elections, sitting MLA Sobaran Singh had contested on the BJP ticket. Thereafter, he joined the SP and won elections three times consecutively. Karhal has a total of about 3.7 lakh electorates, including 1.4 lakh Yadavs, 34,000 Shakhyas and around 14,000 Muslims.