New Delhi: Swift developments on the evening of Sunday, April 23, saw Archana Verma going from being the Samajwadi Party (SP)'s mayoral candidate for Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, to the BJP's, according to Indian Express.

Verma, whose husband and in-laws have been associated with the Akhilesh Yadav-led party for decades, decided to join the ruling party at around 5 pm. By 9 pm, she was declared the BJP's mayoral candidate for Shahjahanpur.

According to IE, the SP was left scrambing to find a replacement for Verma because Monday is the last day to file nominations for Uttar Pradesh's urban local body polls. Though she had been declared as the party's nominee for the polls 12 days ago, Verma had not filed her nomination yet.

Elections to Uttar Pradesh’s 760 urban local bodies – 17 municipal corporations, 199 nagar palika parishads and 544 nagar panchayats – will be held in two phases on May 4 and 11. The winners will be declared on May 13.

Deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak claimed that Verma "was unhappy with the policies of the Samajwadi Party. She couldn’t connect with the SP’s activities. She had issues with the way atrocities were committed against women under the SP governments in the past”, according to IE.

Finance minister Suresh Khanna, a nine-time MLA from Shahjahanpur, played a key role in Verma's defection, Indian Express reported.

“We will announce a new candidate, and the nomination will be filed on Monday,” SP spokesperson Rajendra Choudhary, told IE, accusing the BJP of "misusing power" to get Verma into their fold.

Verma, according to Indian Express, was elected as a Zila Panchayat chairperson in 2004. She married into a political family, and her father-in-law, the late Ram Murtee Singh Verma, was a two-time MP from Shahjahanpur and a four-time MLA. Her husband Rajesh Kumar Verma contested the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh from Dadraul in Shahjahanpur district as an SP candidate, but did not win.

A Shahjahanpur Samajwadi Party leader told IE that on Sunday afternoon, a programme was held at Verma's residence to commemorate the death anniversary of her father-in-law Ram Murtee Singh Verma. "But after the event, she stopped taking our calls and by the evening, we learn from news channels that she has joined the BJP in Lucknow,” the SP leader told the newspaper.

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