Will Samajwadi Party field its Faizabad winner’s son in Uttar Pradesh assembly bypoll?
The Milkipur reserved assembly seat fell vacant after Awadhesh Prasad, who contested his first parliamentary general election, resigned and decided to retain the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, a general one, less than five months after the grand pran pratishtha of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
The Samajwadi Party is likely to field its newly elected Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad’s son Ajit Prasad to defend the Milkipur assembly seat for which a bypoll is expected to be held along with nine other assembly seats later this year.
Awadhesh created a political sensation of sorts by winning the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat in Ayodhya district by defeating the two-time BJP MP Lallu Singh even as the Samajwadi Party won 37 seats in U.P. and its ally, the Congress, bagged six while the BJP won 33 and three more seats went to its partners -- two to the RLD and one to the Apna Dal (S). The Milkipur reserved assembly seat fell vacant after Awadhesh, who contested his first parliamentary general election, resigned and decided to retain the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, a general one, less than five months after the grand pran pratishtha of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.
Awadhesh’s son Ajit Prasad, around 30 years of age, is politically active and contested the zila panchayat polls unsuccessfully. The SP is likely to field its Ambedkar Nagar MP Lalji Verma’s daughter Chaya Verma for the Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar) assembly seat that fell vacant after Lalji Verma resigned it to retain the Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seat. Chaya Verma had contested the UP assembly bypolls on the Jalalpur (Ambedkar Nagar) seat as the BSP candidate in 2019 but had failed to win. At that time, Lalji Verma was the BSP MLA from Katehari. At this stage, the SP is not ready to confirm the speculation.
A senior SP leader said: “The party and its national president Akhileshji will decide. Awadheshji’s son and Lalji Varma’s daughter are already active in politics. Let’s see what the party decides.”
Awadesh was among nine MLAs --four SP MLAs, three BJP MLAs, and one RLD and NISHAD party MLA each -- who won the Lok Sabha polls and vacated their assembly seats.
The assembly seats that fell vacant after the LS polls are: Karhal (Mainpuri), Khair (Aligarh district), Kundarki (Moradabad), Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar), Phulpur (Prayagraj), Ghaziabad (Ghaziabad), Majhawan (Mirzapur), Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar), and Milkipur (Ayodhya).
One more assembly seat — Sisamau (Kanpur) — is likely to go to bypolls as its MLA Irfan Solanki has been convicted and given seven-year imprisonment by a court in Kanpur in a criminal case.
After the tough fight between the BJP-led NDA and the SP-led INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha polls, it again is likely to be a largely bipolar contest between the two sides for the bypolls on 10 U.P. assembly seats, already being dubbed the mini-assembly polls.
Currently, the Samajwadi Party has 107 members in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly while the Congress has just two members. The Bharatiya Janata Party has 252 members.