‘Won’t campaign for Moradabad candidate… (Akhilesh) acted under pressure’: Sitting SP MP S T Hasan

On the last day of nomination filing for the Rampur and Moradabad Lok Sabha seats Wednesday, the Samajwadi Party found itself in a muddle as two candidates each claimed to be the party’s official candidates.

By Wednesday evening, S T Hasan, who the SP said was not its candidate for Moradabad, had withdrawn his papers. On Thursday, the nomination papers of Asim Raja, whom the SP disowned in Rampur, were rejected by election officials.

However, the SP’s problem has not ended, as Hasan, the sitting MP from Moradabad and considered a strong candidate from the seat, has declared he will not campaign for the party’s new candidate, Ruchi Veera. In 2019, Hasan had defeated the BJP candidate from Moradabad by nearly 1 lakh votes.

In an interview to The Indian Express, Hasan says SP president Akhilesh Yadav gave in to pressure from jailed leader Azam Khan, to give the Moradabad ticket to Veera, a former Bijnor MLA.

S T Hasan: I had filed my nomination papers and the party had picked me. At the last moment, the national president (Akhilesh) decided to give the ticket to Ruchi Veera. Even then, I was told that I will contest from the seat. The papers sent to me by the national leadership for allotment of the party’s symbol were stopped by some ‘outsiders’. Then, the SP state president (Naresh Uttam Patel) was taken away in a jet to Rampur.

It was a conspiracy to not let me contest for the party by some outside leaders. They are the ones who stopped the state president from meeting me… I don’t know if the state president was a part of the conspiracy.

S T Hasan: Yes, Moradabad is a Muslim-majority seat, and barring once, the seat has been won by Muslim MPs. Ruchi Veera is a non-Muslim as well as an outsider. The people of Moradabad don’t