NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday fielded Chandrabhan Paswan for byelections in Uttar Pradesh’s Milkipur.
The upcoming poll in Milkipur is seen as a prestige battle between the BJP and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) as the seat was vacated after nine-time MLA and SP leader Awadhesh Prasad won the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat by defeating BJP’s Lallu Singh.
The Milkipur bypoll, being considered the most prestigious of all the byelections held after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, falls near Ayodhya which is part of the Faizabad parliamentary seat that BJP lost.
The loss was the most significant for the BJP in terms of perception, as the Lok Sabha polls were held only a few months after the opening of Ram temple in Ayodhya. The bypoll will take place on February 5.
BJP list
Of the nine seats on which bypolls were held on November 20, seven seats, including the Muslim-dominated Kundarki, were won by the BJP and ally RLD.
The Milkipur assembly constituency did not go to polls due to litigation in the court at that time.
SP has fielded Awadhesh Prasad’s son Ajit Prasad. Awadhesh has been an MLA for seven terms from the then Sohawal (SC) constituency since 1977 and a two-time MLA from Milkipur (SC) since 2012, losing once in 2017 to BJP’s Baba Gorakhnath by a margin of 28,000 votes.
The Milkipur seat is a reserved constituency and has a Pasi population among Dalits of around 80,000. Brahmins are also in similar numbers, followed by Yadavs, whose population is expected to be around 50,000. Thakurs and Muslims have equal strength at around 20,000. Milkipur constituency has around 3.7 lakh voters.
