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The Times of India
The Times of India
National
Pankaj Shah | TNN

After Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mainpuri set to become SP-BJP battlefield

LUCKNOW: Will the void left behind following the demise of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav turn into a political battlefield between the BJP and SP? The question has started doing the rounds with Mainpuri, the parliamentary seat represented by Mulayam, falling vacant, necessitating a bypoll ahead of the high-stake 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

While the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP grapples with the loss of the party founder, political circles in UP have turned rife with the possibility of BJP supporting Akhilesh’s estranged uncle and Mulayam’s brother Shivpal Singh Yadav in Mainpuri, instead of fielding its own candidate from the seat.

While senior BJP leaders remained tight-lipped, party insiders said that the party might lend a covert support to Shivpal to send out a larger message in the entire Yadav heartland comprising Mainpuri, Etawah, Auraiya, Kannauj, Badaun, Firozabad and Farrukhabad.

“The sour relationship between Akhilesh and his uncle is an open secret,” said a senior BJP leader, affirming that the party was in no mood to let go any opportunity to pin down SP, which has been positioning itself as the main rival of the BJP. When contacted, UP BJP spokesperson Hero Bajpai said that politics was a “game of opportunities”. “The party high command will take a call as and when required,” he said.

Political experts, nevertheless, said that Mulayam’s death may just have triggered a huge sympathy factor for the SP, which could fancy its chance of consolidating its position in the core Yadav belt besides other parts of the state. Analysts said that Akhilesh would be shouldering the massive political legacy of his father who engineered extraordinary political relations cutting across party lines. “It is a state of extreme despair for us. We cannot say anything as to what will happen in Mainpuri's case,” said SP spokesperson Abdul Hafiz Gandhi. The SP sources, however, said that the party would do everything to thwart BJP’s covert attempts aimed at cracking SP’s foundation.

Experts said that the BJP might seek to repeat in Mainpuri what it did in the bypolls of Azamgarh and Rampur, considered as SP political bastions.

Mulayam has been representing Mainpuri since 1996 Lok Sabha elections. In 2014, when BJP rose like a political behemoth under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, Mulayam won from Mainpuri as well as Azamgarh. The SP patriarch, however, retained Azamgarh and quit Mainpuri, which was eventually won by his elder brother’s grandson Tej Pratap Singh Yadav in the subsequent bye-election.

In 2019, Mulayam went back to Mainpuri while leaving Azamgarh for his son Akhilesh, which he won comfortably. In the 2022 assembly elections, Akhilesh vacated Azamgarh to contest successfully from Karhal assembly which happens to be part of Mainpuri.

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