By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
As nominations for the by-polls in two districts of Uttar Pradesh, Gorakhpur, and Phulpur closed on Tuesday, one thing has certainly become clear that the coming by-polls will not be an easy win for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as it was in the general elections of 2014.
Moreover, the equation inside Phulpur suggests that there any many issues which BJP has to address to win the seat previously held by Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is now the deputy Chief Minister of the state.
For the by-polls to be held on March 11, BJP has decided to field Kaushalendra Singh Patel, a young leader of BJP and former Mayor of Varanasi. With the nomination of Patel, Phulpur has already started to see the dissent within the party over the presence of an outsider.
Patel, a resident of Varanasi, was actively involved in the campus politics of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – student wing of BJP – during his days as a student of Commerce at Banaras Hindu University. During 2017 state polls, Patel played a major part while conducting small-level meetings, rallies, and even marches to develop BJP’s voters in several districts of eastern UP.
When Patel became an idle figure after vacating the Mayor seat in 2012, many of his close supporters assumed it would be the end of his political innings. But according to party sources, Patel remained close to the top leadership of the party and that is one of the reasons he was awarded the ticket to fight from Phulpur, even though Keshav Prasad Maurya wanted the same for his wife or son.
Many of the party’s local workers and supporters have shown displeasure over the candidature of the Patel, who is not originally from Phulpur district. Santosh Kumar Singh, a party worker in Allahabad, told TwoCircles.net over the phone, “We wanted to work with someone who would know the constituency and workers by heart. When the party brings someone from outside, local workers are put on the sidelines. We do not get many roles to play in the elections.”
Addressing media over the candidature of Patel, Keshav Prasad Maurya said, “What is the fuss about the candidature of an outsider? We have seen Varun Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and even Sonia Gandhi fighting out of their hometowns. Why no one questions them?”
Phulpur, adjacent to Allahabad, is a constituency which is largely marked by Patel and Maurya communities. Prime Ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru and VP Singh have won this seat in the past, along with veteran politicians like VL Pandit and Ram Pujan Patel. It was the elections in 2014, which gave Phulpur seat to BJP for the first time by a huge margin of more than three lakh votes. Prior to this, this seat was particularly the base of Samajwadi Party and Congress.
But seeing the caste equation and abundance of Patel MPs from the seat, Samajwadi Party has also fielded Patel candidate Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel from the same. Nagendra has long associations with SP, and he has been holding the SP’s regional presidential seat for quite a while. Local sources inform that Nagendra has also good links among the general public of Phulpur and Allahabad.
So with Kaushalendra Singh on one side and Nagendra Singh Patel on another, Phulpur by-election was going to be one of the interesting fights until Ateeq Ahmad, gangster-cum-politician, filed his nomination from the seat. Ateeq Ahmad won this seat in 2004 elections while fighting on the ticket of Samajwadi Party, but seeing his criminal background and his involvement in the murder of MLA Raju Pal, SP sidelined itself from its association with Ahmad.
But, the leaders, candidates, and supporters of Samajwadi Party always have a soft heart for the Bahubali leader. It was the reason, when Richa Singh, the 2017 MLA candidate from Samajwadi Party, sought help from Ateeq Ahmad family to consolidate Muslim votes in her favour, but could not succeed. Now, Ateeq Ahmad is fighting from Phulpur as an independent candidate, but SP is clever enough to not to extend its support to him as the BJP-led state government has already been criticising the previous SP regime of favouring criminals.
As the Samajwadi Party has already made a coalition with Peace Party, it will try to take enough advantage of the coalition by attracting remaining of the Muslim voter available in the constituency. A rumoured “understanding” between SP and Bahujan Samaj Party has apparently going to help SP as the later has not fielded any candidate in these by-polls, possibly to avoid “division of votes”. In light of this possibility, remaining votes of Schedule Castes also hold a possibility to go into SP, unlike the last election, when it went one-sided to Bharatiya Janata Party.
Congress has also separately fielded Manish Mishra, a local leader, from the seat, but sources claim “the candidature is just a gesture of fighting as the seat is an emotional episode for Congress-Nehru-Gandhi family”.
These equations were likely enough to disturb the pace of BJP’s victory cart, but the controversy around BJP’s candidate has also come forward to haunt him. Soon after the announcement, KS Patel’s first wife Ritu Singh came out to the media and accused Patel of abuse and violence when she gave birth to a daughter. Many of the close to Patel also tell the same story about him who got married at a very young age.