With 70 per cent of the elections concluded, all eyes are on the penultimate round. 57 assembly seats from 10 districts, namely, Ambedkar Nagar, Ballia, Balrampur, Basti, Deoria, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Sant Kabir Nagar and Siddharthnagar will go to polls on March 3. With that the fate of 676 candidates will be locked in the EVMs.
It will be a real test for the BJP to hold on to its 2017 tally of 46. “In 2017, the BJP had a sizable lead in districts like Kushinagar and Maharajganj and many of the seats in Gorakhpur, Deoria and Basti districts as well. We must remember that this was when the BJP hadn't declared Yogi Adityanath as its CM face. The party would now be hoping that Yogi as CM would offset some of the negative swing that it is facing in these areas. In particular, the party's priority would be to make up for the votes it may lose due to the exit of leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya and the break-up with Om Prakash Rajbhar's SBSP. Unlike last time, the NISHAD party is with the BJP. A key battle here would be for the non-Yadav OBC vote bank. To what extent can Akhilesh Yadav win over this section, especially with Rajbhar and Swami Prasad Maurya by his side? In many areas, the BJP's hold over its Brahmin vote bank would also be tested”, said senior journalist Aditya Menon.
Of the 19 seats that BSP bagged in 2017, 5 came from this region. However, it lost Jalalpur seat in 2019 by-election to Samajwadi Party and 3 of its MLAs (Ram Achal Rajbhar, Lal Ji Verma and Vinay Shankar Tiwari) are now contesting on the SP ticket. Commenting on BSP’s prospects, Aditya Menon said “In 2017, BSP did marginally better than the SP in districts like Sant Kabir Nagar, Basti, Siddharthnagar and Gorakhpur. And it won a majority of seats in Ambedkar Nagar district. Therefore, this is a very important phase for the BSP if it has to challenge SP as the major Opposition force in the state. However, with Vinay Shankar Tiwari and Rakesh Pandey moving to the SP, the BSP has been weakened in this region. Then, it will also be affected by the consolidation of Muslim votes behind the SP, which has been a state-wide phenomenon. It won't be surprising if the SP upstages the BSP as the main opposition in many of the areas where the BSP had managed to hold its ground last time”.
Interestingly, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s seat (who is contesting his first assembly election) will also go into the poll in this phase. He is pitted against Samajwadi Party’s Sabhavati Shukla (wife of Upendra Shukla) and Azad Samaj Party’s Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan. BSP’s Muslim candidate Khwaja Shamsuddin and Congress’s Chetna Pandey are also in the fray.
Seats of congress state president Ajay Kumar Lallu and Vice President Virendra Chaudhary will also go into the poll in this phase. While Ajay Kumar Lallu managed to win his seat of Tamkuhi Raj in 2017, Virendra Chaudhary lost by a thin margin of 2354 votes. Interestingly, he stood second for the fifth consecutive time (2002, 2007, 2012, 2015 by-poll and 2017).
The contest will be quite high profile on Fazilnagar seat as well. Samajwadi Party has given ticket to former minister who quit BJP to join Samajwadi Party and is pitted against Surendra Kumar Kushwaha (son of incumbent legislator Ganga Singh Kushwaha). There’s a considerable Muslim population in this seat and BSP has given ticket to a local Muslim face Ilyas Ansari. Division of Muslim votes will make the roads even more difficult for the Samajwadi Party.
The other big names in fray are Mata Prasad Pandey (former speaker UP assembly) who is contesting from Itwa against Satish Chandra Dwivedi, Leader of Opposition in the state assembly Ram Govind Chaudhary from Bansdih against Ketakee Singh (BJP), Vinay Shankar Tiwari who would be contesting on SP ticket this time against Rajesh Tripathi (BJP) from Chillupar, Rakesh Pandey on SP ticket from Jalalpur against Subhash Rai (BJP) who won the by-election on SP ticket
