Ph-VI to decide fate of Yogi, other bigwigs
Vibha Sharma
Varanasi, March 2
The penultimate round of the UP elections will see voting for 57 seats on Thursday sealing the fate of political heavyweights such as CM Yogi Adityanath, who is contesting from Gorakhpur Urban, Congress’ Ajay Kumar Lallu and SP’s Swami Prasad Maurya.
The SP has fielded a Brahmin candidate, Subhawati Shukla, against Adityanath. Subhawati is wife of late BJP leader Upendra Dutt Shukla. She has been accusing the BJP of “ignoring” the family after the death of her husband, who “served the BJP for 42 years”.
Key constituencies
- Fazilnagar from where Swami Prasad Maurya, who led the exodus from BJP, is contesting
- Gorakhpur Urban is a seat which the BJP has not lost since 1989 and Chillupar, also in the district, it has never won
Making the contest interesting is Chandrashekhar Azad, the Bhim Army chief who is fighting on the Azad Samaj Party ticket, Congress’ Chetna Pandey, former ABVP leader, AAP’s Vijay Kumar Srivastava, a Kayasth, and BSP’s Khwaja Shamsuddin.
This particular belt of Purvanchal will also test BSP’s traditional vote bank and claims of social engineering by its leaders. The BJP is hoping that the BSP does well to provide another angle in the elections that have largely been direct/bipolar between the BJP and the SP so far.
