JOIN USWith BSP, Congress bowing out, UP Assembly bypoll will be BJP-SP direct contest
With the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress deciding to opt out of the forthcoming bye-election for the Gola Gokarannath Assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district, it would be a one-on-one contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP).
The bypoll, which was necessitated following the death of sitting MLA, BJP’s Arvind Giri, last month due to cardiac arrest, would be a test for both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and SP president Akhilesh Yadav.
For the bye-election, the BJP has fielded the late MLA’s son Aman Giri—in the apparent hope of gaining sympathy votes.
The SP, on the other hand, has fielded Vinay Tewari, who had won the seat in 2012 assembly polls. Voting for the seat would be held on Thursday.
On Monday, Chief Minister Adityanath addressed a public meeting in the constituency, in which he enumerated the state government’s achievements. “Criminals and mafias have fled from the state,” he said in his speech, claiming that the SP had already conceded defeat in the bypoll and was looking for “excuses”.
The bypoll will also be a test of Akhilesh’s standing in SP, in the aftermath of the death of his father, former chief minister Mulayalam Singh Yadav, who was also the party founder
In the March 2022 assembly polls, the SP candidate was defeated by Arvind Giri by over 29,000 votes. However, Tewari was confident he would be victorious in the bypoll, as there would be no division of the “anti-BJP” votes this time.
Lakhimpur-Kheri was the hometown of Union minister Ajay Mishra, whose son was the prime accused in the alleged killing of four farmers in October last year during a demonstration in protest against the no- repealed farm laws.
Mishra’s name was not included in BJP’s list of star campaigners in the constituency in the bypoll.