Rajnath to contest from Haidergarh to keep CM post

Rajnath to contest from Haidergarh to keep CM post
SHARAD GUPTA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 3: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh is most likely to seek election to the state Assembly from Haidergarh in Barabanki district, the seat vacated for him by Congress MLA Surendra Nath Awasthi alias Puttu last month.

``I did not want a BJP MLA to resign to enable me to reach the Assembly'', Singh told The Indian Express today. ``I have already made my preference known to the BJP High Command and the announcement has to come from them,'' he said on being asked whether he would contest from Haidergarh, an upper caste-dominated constituency.

Rajnath has to get elected before April 27 this to remain in the saddle in U.P. though he is yet to resign his Rajya Sabha seat. It was due to this urgency that Assembly Speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi accepted Awasthi's resignation immediately and sent a request to the Election Commission to hold by-elections in the constituency at the ``earliest''.

Upper-caste dominance in Haidergarh is also reflected by the fact that the seat has been represented by Brahmins alone during the past 20 years. If Shyam Lal Bajpai of the Congress won the seat in 1985, Puttu Awasthi won it in 1991 and 1996 while Sunder Lal Dixit of the BJP wrested it in 1989 and 1993.

Upper castes, mainly Brahmins, comprise almost 40 per cent of Haidergarh's population, with Muslims, Yadavs and Scheduled Castes constituting another 35 per cent of the electorate.

Besides Haidergarh, by-polls are also scheduled to be held for Sadabad in Hathras, which fell vacant after the death of the BJP's Chaudhury Bishambhar Singh. The Shahjahanpur parliamentary seat is being contested by Jitendra Prasada's widow, Kanta Prasada. The BJP is likely to field UP Tourism Minister Ashok Yadav from Shahjahanpur, which has a sizeable population of Yadavs. The BJP leadership is learnt to have decided against fielding Satyapal Singh Yadav, a former Union minister, against Kanta Prasada apparently because he has allegedly been holding talks with BSP leaders Kanshi Ram and Mayawati.

With an upper-caste Chief Minister and state party chief in Kalraj Mishra, the BJP also wants to make inroads into the sizeable OBC population in the state and Ashok Yadav's ability to swing Yadavs in the recently-held Bharthana Assembly by-poll towards the BJP is learnt to have gone in his favour.

The three by-elections will not only decide Rajnath's fate but may also be an indicator of political winds blowing in UP, especially since Congress has been making a concerted attempt to woo upper-caste voters in the state.

On his part, Rajnath appears proud of his party's performance in the recently held by-elections though the party managed to win only one of the three seats. ``We managed to increased our vote percentage and that is more than a consolation for us,'' he said.

Ruling out early polls to the UP Assembly, the Chief Minister asserted that BJP would form the next government as well. ``It will be a BJP government or a BJP-led one,'' he said when asked whether the party was trying for a post-poll arrangement with the BSP.