In Uttar Pradesh, 10 constituencies will go to polls for phase 3.
Agra, Aonla, Badaun, Bareilly, Etah, Fatehpur Sikri,
Firozabad, Hathras, Mainpuri, Sambhal
In Hathras, a gangrape made news in 2020. But in 2024, even the Samajwadi Party which is campaigning on women’s safety, among other issues against Yogi Adityanath and the BJP is not talking about the rape and death for fear of 'antagonising' the substantial upper caste vote in this reserved SC seat.
Change of heart.....change of candidates ...belated wisdom ??
The Samajwadi Party (SP) that is contesting 62 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh has changed candidates in 10 of the constituencies to date, including twice in as many days.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav himself replaced his nephew Tej Pratap Yadav as the candidate from the party stronghold of Kannauj on Thursday, three days after Tej Pratap’s candidature was announced. On Friday, during scrutiny of nomination papers, the party’s Shahjahanpur candidate Rajesh Kashyap, who filed his documents on April 22 said he came to know that the SP had cancelled his name and instead fielded a candidate whose maternal uncle is an MLC.
Akhilesh Yadav had 'picked' a few leaders to contest the elections based on caste equations etc, but, they were not necessarily backed by the SP leadership in the district units.
For instance, there are at least 15 people who have come from BSP in the last couple of years. They have also been given tickets by the SP. Now, when these outsiders are declared candidates, the party’s local leadership opposes them and the president is forced to change the nominees.
In Kannauj, the local leadership started opposing Tej Pratap’s candidature.”
Mainpuri - welcome to the Yadav heartland.Mulayam Singh Yadav won from the constituency in 1996 to become India'sDefence Minister under H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral. Since then, this is afamily bastion. In 2022 by-poll after Mulayam's death the seat was won by his daughter-in-law Ms Dimple.
The lawmaker wife of Samajwadi Party chiefis not a Yadav by birth; but that's not the issue and hence she has been fieldedagain. This is one seat -- the BJP may not struggle to wrest amid a hyped Ram Mandircampaign.
No candidate in Hathras is openly speaking about the gory incident. While the BJP has fielded state Revenue Minister Anoop Pradhan Valmiki, the other candidates include the Samajwadi Party’s (SP’s) Jasveer Valmiki and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP’s) Hembaboo Dhangar.
The Dalits and Thakurs number an even 3 lakh each in the Hathras Lok Sabha seat, followed by 2 lakh Brahmins, 2 lakh Vaishyas and 80,000 Muslims. The upper caste votes, apart from the support for it by non-Jatav Dalits, mean the seat has long been a BJP bastion.
The party has won Hathras consecutively since 1991 – in 2009, the RLD won here as a BJP ally. The BSP finished runner-up in each poll between 1996 and 2014. In 2019, when the SP and BSP were allies, the SP’s candidate here was placed second. (Indian Express)
A few Dalit families in the village are all relatives of the victim. The rest of the village comprises upper-caste Thakurs and Brahmins, and Other Backward Class (OBC) Prajapatis.
Thakurs, who are the dominant community in the village, continue to stand by the accused. Guddu Singh, the father of the main accused Sandeep, says he is a BJP voter and that the allegations against his son are “fake”. “Upper castes here were upset with (then) BJP MP Rajveer Diler because he met the victim’s family. He was a gentleman but got the names of three others included in the case under pressure from his own (Dalit) community. I believe that this is the reason the BJP denied him a ticket,” Guddu says.
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