UP Election 2022: Congress first to field candidate in SP bastion of Azamgarh

VARANASI: The Congress party, which had contested the 2017 assembly elections in alliance with the Samajwadi Party, has become the first political party to field its candidate, Praveen Kumar Singh, from Azamgarh in the 2022 election.
Though the Congress has fielded a young face of the party and district president of Azamgarh, political observers here feel it would be a difficult task for him to make any impact in the SP’s bastion.
The reason: Azamgarh assembly segment has been a stronghold of SP since 1996 and represented by Durga Prasad Yadav for five times in a row. Besides, the Azamgarh parliamentary seat has also been represented by the SP for the last two consecutive terms, including SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and party chief Akhilesh Yadav since 2014. The Azamgarh parliamentary constituency has five assembly segments, including Gopalpur, Sagri, Mubarakpur, Azamgarh and Mehnagar (SC). Except Sagri, which was snatched by BSP’s Bandana Singh in 2017, all other seats are represented by the SP.
According to records, though the Azamgarh parliamentary seat had been a bastion of Congress in the beginning during five consecutive general elections from 1952 to 1971, it could not open its account after 1984. From 1989 onwards, Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat was represented by various political parties, including BSP (1989, 1998, 2004, 2008), Janata Dal (1991), SP (1996, 1999, 2014, 2019) and BJP (2009).
In such a situation, the grand old party Congress, which could win the Azamgarh assembly seat only two times in 1977 and 1980, will have to play on a difficult turf in the 2022 assembly election. Before 1996, this seat had shown a mixed characteristic by electing the candidates of different parties, including Praja Socialist Party (1957 & 1962), Samyukta Socialist Party (1967 & 1969), Bharatiya Kranti Dal (1974), Congress (1977 & 1980), Independent (1985), Janata Dal (1989 & 1991), and BSP (1993).
The SP captured the seat in 1996, and it has been represented by Durga Prasad Yadav since then. However, Yadav had also won the seat in the past as an independent in 1985 and on Janata Dal tickets in 1989 and 1991. In the last election in 2017, he had defeated BJP’s Akhilesh by a margin of 26,262 votes.