SP names Lok Sabha candidate from Gorakhpur day after Nishad Party exits alliance
The announcement comes a day after Nishad Party severed ties with the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party led ‘gathbandhan’ in Uttar Pradesh.
Day after Nishad Party walking out of the Samajwadi Party -Bahujan Samaj Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (SP-BSP-RLD) alliance, the SP declared its candidate for the Gorakhpur seat.
The SP announced candidates on Gorakhpur and Kanpur seat on Saturday. The party has fielded Rambhuyan Nishad from Gorakhpur and Ram Kumar from Kanpur. It also changed its candidate on Moradabad seat. ST Hasan is the new candidate in place of Nasir Qureshi.
The Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Apna Dal (Nishad) Party had joined the alliance with fanfare on Tuesday at a joint press conference and it was clear in the SP that it will again field sitting MP Praveen Nishad on the seat on SP ticket. However, no further bargaining could materialise and Sanjay Nishad, chief of Nishad Party, snapped ties with the alliance and also took son Praveen Nishad along.
Following this, Akhilesh Yadav quickly declared SP’s candidate on the Gorakhpur seat -- the seat that the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath had won five times till he vacated it on becoming the chief minister. Then SP, in alliance with BSP, took Nishad Party on board and under the pact fielded Praveen Nishad on SP ticket. Praveen won.
The SP had decided to repeat Praveen as its candidate on the seat, but Sanjay Nishad, apparently, wanted Maharajganj seat for himself under the alliance but the bargain could not materialise.
Political analyst Manoj Singh said “the Nishad (boatmen) community is influential in Gorakhpur region...comprises 14% of state’s population, with 3.5 lakh Nishads in Gorakhpur alone.”