New battle lines in UP for 10 Assembly seat bypolls as NDA, INDIA step up for next bout

After the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls, the stage is now set in Uttar Pradesh for bypolls in 10 Assembly seats over the next few months. Nine MLAs, mainly from the ruling BJP as well as the principal Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP), emerged victorious from various Lok Sabha constituencies in the polls. Some of them have already resigned from the Assembly to retain their Lok Sabha seats, and the remaining would do so in the coming days.

The Sishamau Assembly seat is also going to be vacated since its SP MLA Irfan Solanki is set to lose his membership of the House after being recently sentenced to seven years imprisonment in an arson case.

SP president Akhilesh Yadav has already vacated his Karhal Assembly seat to retain the Kannauj parliamentary constituency that he won in the Lok Sabha polls, while the party’s Milkipur MLA Awadhesh Prasad has also followed suit with regard to the Faizabad (Ayodhya) parliamentary seat.

The stakes would be high for both the ruling BJP, which lost ground in UP in the Lok Sabha polls, and the Opposition INDIA bloc comprising the SP and the Congress, which seems to be resurgent in the state.

Already anticipated is an aggressive contest for Milkipur in Ayodhya, which the ruling BJP would like to wrest from the SP, having lost the Lok Sabha battle in the crucial Faizabad constituency to the SP.

The SP is considering who would be its best possible candidate from Karhal. The name of Akhilesh’s nephew Tej Pratap Yadav is doing the rounds for it. Tej Pratap was initially declared as the SP’s candidate from Kannauj in the Lok Sabha polls, before Akhilesh himself decided to contest from the seat.

Though until the 2022 Assembly polls, the fight on most of these bypoll seats involved the SP and the BJP