BJP trumps SP as it lays claim to Azam’s stronghold Rampur

LUCKNOW: In a first for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, the party on Thursday won the Rampur Sadar assembly seat — considered a stronghold of Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan

LUCKNOW: In a first for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, the party on Thursday won the Rampur Sadar assembly seat — considered a stronghold of Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan.

BJP candidate Akash Saxena celebrates after winning, in Rampur. (PTI)

The BJP’s candidate, Akash Saxena, defeated the SP’s Asim Raza by a margin of 34,000 votes.

The win for the BJP comes within six months of its victory in the bypoll to the Rampur Lok Sabha seat. The bypoll for the assembly seat was necessitated after the SP leader was sentenced to three years in jail in a hate speech case, and subsequently disqualified as MLA.

Khan has represented the assembly seat 10 times.

Saxena, 47, had contested from Rampur Sadar against 73-year-old Azam Khan in the 2022 assembly elections, but lost even though Khan was in prison at the time.

Incidentally, the SP candidate Raza was the party’s candidate for the Rampur Lok Sabha bypoll as well.

Saxena has filed about 30 of the nearly 100 police complaints in Rampur against Khan, who is currently out on bail after spending nearly two years in jail. When the Rampur MP/MLA court handed out a three-year imprisonment to Azam, Akash petitioned the UP Assembly speaker to disqualify him from the membership.

On the other hand, the BJP unleashed a campaign blitzkrieg in Rampur.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, BJP state president Bhupendra Chaudhary, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, several UP ministers and many others campaigned extensively in Rampur for Saxena. Former union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who hails from Rampur, held several door-to-door meetings in the constituency. The BJP also held ‘khichdi panchayats’ and ‘pasmanda (backward)’ Muslim meets.

In the run up to the bypoll, Khan’s close aide Fasahat Ali Khan joined the BJP and campaigned for the party.

After the poll results were announced, chief minister Yogi Adityanath tweeted: “...The BJP won the Rampur assembly seat for the first time, greetings to the winner Akash Saxena and all the BJP workers in Rampur for this.”

Yadav said in Mainpuri: “Rampur saw injustice against SP candidate. Had it been a fair election in Rampur, it would have been a historic win in Rampur.”