This story is from September 17, 2019

Hamirpur battle: 1st four-cornered fight after SP, BSP snapped alliance

Bypoll in Hamirpur constituency will witness the first four-cornered fight in Uttar Pradesh after at least five years.
Hamirpur battle: 1st four-cornered fight after SP, BSP snapped alliance
SP candidate Manoj Prajapati addresses a public meeting in Badagaon
HAMIRPUR: Bypoll in Hamirpur constituency will witness the first four-cornered fight in Uttar Pradesh after at least five years. The election — the first since the BSP-SP alliance snapped in May — was necessitated after sitting MLA Ashok Kumar Chandel was disqualified following his conviction in a 22-year-old murder case.
The first of 13 by-elections scheduled in UP this year, Hamirpur will witness a clash between a Thakur fielded by BJP, a Muslim candidate from BSP and two OBCs, a Prajapati from SP and a Nishad from Congress.
The polling will be held on September 23 and counting on September 27.
The 2014 general election was the last time when four major parties contested independently. In 2017, SP and Congress had forged an alliance and the following year, SP and BSP struck a deal for the bypolls, which continued in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The result of the first bypoll will give a headstart to the party which wins for 12 other by-elections due later this year. Leaving nothing to chance, senior members of all parties have been mobilized to campaign extensively in Hamirpur.
BJP candidate Yuvraj Singh comes from an old political family and this is his first election after he joined BJP from SP in 2015. Singh has been a Congress MLA and SP MLC. The election, he says, will be fought on BJP’s development plank and PM Modi’s virtual presence will play a key role in BJP’s campaign.
The party is downplaying Chandel’s conviction, saying the party is bigger than the individual. Ram Dutt Pandey, BJP’s media in-charge in Hamirpur, said had Chandel continued his sway over Hamirpur, his son would have been declared candidate. “It’s the party that people vote for, not the person,” he said.

SP’s candidate Manoj Prajapati contested 2017 election, but came second despite a SP-Congress alliance. This time, he’s confident. “I expect no challenge from BSP, a party with whom SP contested bypolls last year and the Lok Sabha election this year or Congress,” he said.
However, with BSP having fielded a Muslim candidate, SP can expect to see minority votes getting split. Even as the party downplays the threat, saying BSP candidate Naushad Ali is from Kannauj and hence an outsider, sources in SP also suggest a conspiracy to sabotage their election.
Naushad Ali, meanwhile, refutes the charge of being an outsider, saying he has been the coordinator for Bundelklhand for over nine years and has a strong connect with the region. Congress candidate Hardeepak Nishad, 34, is the youngest candidate in fray. He’s banking on a major presence of Nishads in the constituency and this is his first big election for him after winning the zila panchayat polls.
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