An IPS officer who recently took voluntary retirement and rebels from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress figured in the BJP’s second list of 85 candidates for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections released on Friday. Out of the 85, 49 belonged to the backward and Dalit communities, while 15 were women, the party said.
Asim Arun, who served as Kanpur Police Commissioner before joining the BJP, has been fielded from the reserved seat of Kannauj Sadar, which the party narrowly lost to the SP in 2017. Mr. Arun hails from Kannauj.
Aditi Singh, who was elected as MLA of Rae Bareli on a Congress ticket in the last election, will now contest from the same seat for the BJP. An outspoken rebel of the Congress, she recently joined the BJP.
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Other rebels
Another leader from Rae Bareli district who was elected as Congress MLA last time, Rakesh Singh, has been fielded by the BJP from Harchandpur.
BSP rebel MLA Anil Singh will contest from Purwa in Unnao while Ramveer Upadhyay, once a Brahmin face of the BSP and sitting MLA from Sadabad in Hathras, will contest on a BJP ticket this time.
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Hariom Yadav, SP MLA from Sirsaganj in Firozabad, and a distant relative of the SP’s Yadav clan, is the BJP’s bet from the same seat.
The party retained most of its sitting MLAs in these seats, replacing only half-a-dozen names.
In the crucial district of Kanpur, the BJP swapped its losing candidates in Sisamau and Arya Nagar seats, both held by the SP, while in Kanpur Cantonment, which was won by the Congress, the BJP has given a second chance to Raghunandan Bhadauria.