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Azamgarh LS bypoll: Rajbhar goes full throttle to back SP candidate
Within hours of the first meeting, Rajbhar campaigned for SP candidate Dharmendra Yadav in in Barohi Fatehpur village. Before the day ended, he addressed three more public meetings in Azamgarh seeking votes for Yadav
LUCKNOW Along with the summer heat, the political temperature is also rising in the eastern UP district of Azamgarh as campaigning for the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll is on. On a sultry Tuesday afternoon, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) president Om Prakash Rajbhar held a public meeting in support of Samajwadi Party (SP) Azamgarh candidate Dharmendra Yadav, standing under a tree, in Tezpur village in Billariyaganj block of the district.
In Azamgarh, no one whose party is not contesting the polls is campaigning the way Rajbhar is.
Within hours of this meeting, Rajbhar, attired in yellow (his party colour), campaigned for Dharmendra in Barohi Fatehpur village of the same block. Before the day ended, he addressed three more public meetings in Azamgarh seeking votes and victory for Dharmendra. In between, he met the SP candidate to discuss his campaign plans and strategy.
Rajbhar’s behaviour and statements often baffle political observers. His party had been unhappy with the SP during the recent Rajya Sabha and UP Legislative Council polls nomination. Reason: the SP did not give any seats to the SBSP in these indirect polls but gave a Rajya Sabha seat to another alliance partner, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
Prior to that, Rajbhar had repeatedly criticised SP national president Akhilesh Yadav for “staying put in AC (air-conditioned) rooms than venturing out in the summer heat.”
But contradicting that friction, since June 9, Rajbhar is campaigning in Azamgarh for the alliance partner’s candidate.
“No one is campaigning like him. He is camping there, it’s his region. We are the SP ally, and he is doing what an alliance partner should do in the best possible manner,” said Piyush Mishra, national spokesperson of the SBSP.
Rajbhar is sweating it out in Azamgarh primarily to mobilise the sizable Rajbhar community votes in five of the 10 assembly segments of Azamgarh.
“There is a sizable number of Rajbhars in Sagadi, Mehnagar, Nizamabad, Atraulia, and Azamgarh Sadar. Our party president is seeking transfer of all these votes to Dharmendra Yadav,” he said.
Om Prakash Rajbhar is campaigning largely in these five segments and party sources said that he will stay in Azamgarh till the polls. Azamgarh, along with the Rampur Lok Sabha seat, will go to the polls on June 23.
Rajbhar will campaign only in Azamgarh and might not go to Rampur at all as Azamgarh is in the eastern UP region where SBSP has strength.
If the SP is fighting to retain Azamgarh, the seat that SP chief Akhilesh Yadav vacated to retain his Karhal assembly seat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Dinesh Lal Yadav, popularly known as Nirahua, while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has fielded Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali.
The SP looks to retain Azamgarh by fielding Akhilesh’s cousin and former parliamentarian Dharmendra Yadav. Apart from these, 10 more candidates are trying their luck in the upcoming Azamgarh parliamentary bypoll.
Azamgarh is SP’s stronghold. In the 2019 general elections, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav won the seat, and in the 2022 UP assembly polls, the SP won all the 10 seats in the district. The BJP has never won the Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency.
Piyush Mishra said: “Our national president is very much with the Samajwadi Party in these polls as was the case in 2022 UP assembly polls. And regarding the criticism of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, he had only asked the SP chief to sweat it out against the ruling party.”
