Kairana (UP), May 23: After the party’s shock defeat in the bye-elections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the BJP seems to be taking no chances in Kairana.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is leading a pack of UP ministers campaigning in this communally sensitive Lok Sabha constituency which goes to the polls May 28. Tuesday, he and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya campaigned in Saharanpur district, in which part of Kairana constituency falls. Tomorrow, they will hold meetings in Shamli district.
Opposition parties too are going all out for victory, which they feel will set the tone for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, will campaign here for the joint opposition candidate, Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Tabassum Hasan.
Her party’s national vice-president Jayant Chaudhary has been regularly visiting the constituency since the announcement of the polls and is likely to remain in Kairana for the remaining few days till the end of the campaign. Tabassum Hasan is contesting against BJP’s Mriganka Singh, whose father Hukum Singh’s death has led to this bypoll.
Apart from Adityanath and his deputy, the Bharatiya Janata Party has thrown in at least five other state ministers into the fight for Kairana. They include Dharam Singh Saini (minister of state for Ayush), Suresh Rana (Sugarcane Development) Anupama Jaiswal (Basic Education) Surya Pratap Shahi (Agriculture) and Laxmi Narayan (Religious Affairs, Culture, Minority Welfare, Muslim Waqf and Haj).
Of these, Dharam Saini and Rana are MLAs from Nakur and Thana Bhawan assembly segments of the constituency. Anupama Jaiswal is the minister in charge of Shamli district, while Surya Pratap Shahi is the minister in charge of Saharanpur. “Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary has been roped in, since he hails from a farming background,” a senior UP BJP leader said.
Apart from this, BJP MPs Sanjiv Baliyan, Raghav Lakhan Pal, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar and Kanta Kardam are also actively campaigning for Mriganka Singh.
The opposition is projecting these visits as a sign of the jitters in the ruling party, which recently lost Gorakhpur, a Lok Sabha seat vacated by Yogi Adityanath himself when he became chief minister. “By sending so many ministers to a parliamentary constituency during a bypoll, the BJP has clearly displayed its nervousness,” SP spokesperson Sunil Singh Sajan said. “Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is likely to hold one election meeting during the bye-elections, and his one meeting will prove to be quite enough for the BJP,” he boasted.
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