New Delhi: The INDIA bloc’s candidate selection in the key state of Uttar Pradesh appears to be in a mess. Nominations have been filed for the first two phases of the 2024 Lok Sabha election — comprising 16 constituencies in the volatile western region of the state. The state has 80 Lok Sabha seats.
In these 16 seats that will vote on April 19 and 26, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress, primarily the former, changed their declared candidates or probable candidates on seven seats. In some cases, the candidates were inexplicably and abruptly changed multiple times or had multiple claimants filing nomination. This has altered local caste equations and confused party supporters.
A key seat where the drama played out was Meerut, won by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on seven out of nine occasions in the last 33 years. However, the social calculus here makes the constituency one up for grabs. In 2019, the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP’s) joint candidate Haji Yakoob Qureshi lost to the BJP’s sitting MP Rajesh Agarwal by a thin margin of 4,729. The Congress candidate secured over 34,000 votes while over 6,000 went to NOTA.
To turn the tide this time, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav fielded a Dalit advocate Bhanu Pratap Singh in Meerut as part of an experiment to tap into the Dalit votes even though Meerut is not a reserved constituency. However, Singh was rejected by a section of SP leaders who felt he was an ‘outsider’— Singh is from Bulandshahr and is actively politically in Delhi, especially against EVMs. Singh was replaced by Atul Pradhan, a popular young Gurjar MLA from Sardhana, one of the assembly constituents in Meerut.
Pradhan even filed his nomination but a day before the final day of nomination, April 4, he was summoned to Lucknow by Akhilesh Yadav, who asked him to back out. In place of Pradhan, the SP eventually fielded Sunita Verma, a Dalit leader and former mayor of Meerut. She is the wife of Yogesh Verma, a former MLA. The couple was expelled by the BSP before they joined the SP ahead of the 2022 assembly election. The ‘Dalit’ card in Meerut has made the battle interesting, as Jatavs (Verma’s caste) and Muslims form a sizable chunk of voters. The BJP has fielded Arun Govil, an upper caste actor famous for playing Lord Ram on screen.
However, Pradhan’s supporters did not appreciate him being asked to back out despite filing his nomination. And soon, speculation was rife that Pradhan was planning to resign as MLA and jump ship to the BJP, like so many Opposition leaders have done this season. In a Facebook live with his supporters late on April 4, he tried to explain why he wanted to contest. He said he wanted to fight for more representation for his community — the Gurjar community — in ticket distribution to attract their support away from the BJP. A section of the SP was baffled by Pradhan’s demand to contest the Lok Sabha even though he was elected MLA in 2022 and his wife was also fielded as the party’s mayor candidate in the urban body polls last year. The suspense over Pradhan’s future continued till the afternoon of April 5 when he in a hurriedly-convened press conference tried to clear the air. Pradhan underlined his loyalty to Akhilesh Yadav and said he would campaign for the party wherever his leader asked him to. He brushed aside all speculation that he was joining the BJP. “I started my politics with a socialist ideology,” said Pradhan, stressing that he would follow Yadav’s directions.
Confusion also prevailed in Bijnor, where the SP tried a similar experiment of fielding a Dalit on a general seat. It initially named Yashveer Singh, a former MP, as Bijnor candidate. But Singh was replaced by a younger leader Deepak Saini, son of a sitting SP MLA Ram Autar Singh from Noorpur, a constituent of the Nagina Lok Sabha seat that abuts Bijnor. In Nagina reserved constituency, where firebrand Dalit leader Chandrashekhar is in the fray, the SP has fielded a retired additional and sessions judge Manoj Kumar.
Also read: Why BJP’s Claim it Will Win All 80 Seats in Uttar Pradesh Is Very Far-Fetched
The SP also struggled to find consensus candidates in Rampur and Moradabad, two constituencies with large Muslim populations. Since the SP had won both the seats in 2019 and given its demographics, picking candidates on these two seats was supposed to be a relatively straight-forward matter. High drama, however, prevailed there as well.
In Moradabad, the sitting SP MP S.T. Hasan fielded his nomination but he was in for a shock when former MLA and aide of jailed senior leader Azam Khan, Ruchi Veera, turned up to file her nomination as well, claiming to be the official nominee. In the end, Hasan’s papers were rejected. Disgruntled, he said he would not campaign for Veera in Moradabad. Given that Moradabad has a high percentage of Muslim population and overall representation of the minority community is falling under the BJP rule, it was expected that the SP would play it safe and field someone from the community.
In Rampur, the picture was even more chaotic. Azam Khan’s aide Mohammad Asim Raja, who lost the Rampur by-poll election in 2022, filed his nomination as the SP candidate but the party then fielded a Delhi-based cleric Mohibullah Nadwi as its official nominee. Nadwi, a native of Rampur, is the imam of the Parliament Street Masjid in the capital.
The SP also changed its candidate at the last minute in Baghpat, where its former ally the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) is contesting as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The party initially fielded a Jat, Manoj Chaudhary, against the RLD’s Jat candidate but a day before nomination concluded, the SP handed over the ticket to former MLA from Ghaziabad, Amarpal Sharma, a Brahmin. In the adjacent Gautam Buddha Nagar, the SP fielded Mahendra Nagar but replaced him with young leader Rahul Awana only to replace him again with the original choice.
In Mathura, which the SP has left for the Congress, it was expected that the alliance would field Jat boxer Vijender Singh to take on Hema Malini. However, he shocked everyone by joining the BJP, leaving the Congress stranded without a nominee. In the end, the party picked a lesser-known face and state secretary, Mukesh Dhangar. The only solace the alliance might have got in Mathura is that the BSP too promptly changed its candidate, a Brahmin, and replaced him with a Jat, Suresh Singh, a retired IRS officer with links to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Though born a Tamil Brahmin, Malini is projected as a Jat celebrity candidate in Mathura due to her husband Dharmendra’s identity. The BSP candidate is expected to challenge the BJP for the Jat votes.
Addressing a rally for Malini in Mathura, chief minister Adityanath mocked the Opposition parties for failing to find good candidates against her. “Hema Malini ji is contesting from here for the third time. But other parties don’t even have a candidate. They are not able to even borrow a candidate,” said Adityanath.
Chaudhary Jayant Singh, RLD president and now BJP ally, also teased the SP for changing candidates on so many seats, saying that some Opposition leaders were “fortunate” to have been declared as Lok Sabha candidates for a few hours.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya also joined in and said that Yadav had lost all hope of victory in the election and was only busy in changing candidates.
The Opposition’s uncertainty is not restricted to the first two phases. The SP had initially fielded Dharmendra Yadav as its candidate in the hot seat of Budaun but later replaced him with his uncle Shivpal Yadav. Dharmendra is now the candidate from Azamgarh in East Uttar Pradesh even as speculation is rife that the SP might replace Shivpal and field his son Adtiya Yadav from Budaun.
The Congress too changed its candidate in Sitapur, replacing former BSP leader Nakul Dubey, a Brahmin, with Rakesh Rathore, an OBC and former BJP MLA.
