The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Friday released its fourth list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha election. The list contains a total of nine candidates, including former State president Bhim Rajbhar, who is contesting from Azamgarh, Balkrishna Chauhan from Ghosi, Shyam Kishore Awasthi from Dhauraha, Mohammad Irfan from Etah, Sachidanand Pandey from Faizabad, Dayashankar Mishra from Basti, Javed Simnani from Gorakhpur, Satyendra Kumar Maurya from Chandauli and Dhaneshwar Gautam from Robertsganj.
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With this list, the BSP has declared candidates for 46 Parliamentary segments of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats.
Of the nine candidates, three are Brahmin while two are Muslim. The selection of Mr. Rajbhar from Azamgarh is seen as an outreach towards the Rajbhar community which is sizeable in Azamgarh and adjoining districts. In Ghosi, with ticket to former MP Balkrishna Chauhan, the party dropped yet another sitting MP, Atul Rai.
In the list, the BSP accommodated party old-timers as well as BJP and Congress defectors. For instance, the Ghosi candidate Mr. Chauhan, had won the seat for the BSP in the 1999 Parliamentary election. Mr. Chauhan made a comeback to the Dalit centric party days ago, after quitting the Congress.