All eyes on Samajwadi Party bastion Mainpuri in UP bypolls

All eyes will be on the Samajwadi Party (SP) bastion of Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency in the bypolls to two Assembly and one Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh scheduled for Monday.

With the ruling BJP going all out to wrest the Mainpuri seat, which fell vacant after SP founder and sitting MP Mulayam Singh Yadav's death, ahead of the next LS polls in 2024, and SP president Akhilesh Yadav and the members of Mulayam's huge political clan sweating hard to save the family turf, the battle for Mainpuri has turned into a matter of prestige for both the arch-rivals.

The significance of Mainpuri for Akhilesh could be gauged from the fact that he went all out to placate his estranged uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, who was an MLA from Jaswant Nagar, one of the segments in the constituency, and managed to persuade him to campaign for his wife Dimple Yadav, the SP nominee from the seat.

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Not only Shivpal but almost the entire Mulayam clan had extensively campaigned in Mainpuri and sought votes of the electorate in the name of Mulayam, who had represented the seat several times in the Lok Sabha. Akhilesh himself spent several days in the constituency and addressed dozens of public meetings bsides campaigning door-to-door, something he had not done in the bypolls to Azamgarh and Rampur LS seats, which the SP lost to BJP recently.

Political observers opine that the result of Mainpuri bypoll would decide the political stature of Akhilesh in the state. "A win for the SP will firmly put him (Akhilesh) in the saddle and send the message that the SP supporters (mainly Yadavs) have accepted him as the political heir of Mulayam," said a Lucknow based analyst while speaking to DH here. SP is banking almost entirely on the sympathy factor and four lakh Yadav voters besides the Muslims to romp home.

BJP has fielded Raghuraj Singh Shakya, a former protege of Shivpal in the hope of taking advantage of the feud between the latter and Akhlesh and also with an eye on the three lakh Shakya voters.

B-polls to Khatauli and Rampur Assembly seats will also be held on Monday.