Samajwadi Party fields Hasan Roomi from Cantt seat in place of Atiq Ahmad

KANPUR: Mohd Hasan Roomi will be the SP candidate from Kanpur Cantonment seat in place of don-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad.
It may be mentioned that as was being expected, Atiq did not find his name in CM Akhilesh Yadav's list.
The party sources informed TOI that Roomi has been selected for Cantt seat because he had lost with a narrow margin of over 9,000 votes to BJP's Raghunandan Bhadauria during the 2012 assembly elections.
The party had earlier given the ticket from this seat to Parvez Ansari but he was later replaced by Atiq Ahmad when the party's list of candidates was re-released by the then state president of the party Shivpal Yadav. Since then it was not clear who will contest from this seat as CM Akhilesh Yadav was against Atiq contesting the election. All guesswork however ended on Friday afternoon after Roomi bagged the ticket from the Cantt seat.
Interestingly, though Kanpur Cantt is a Muslim majority constituency, but no Muslim candidate could ever win from this seat.
Roomi while talking to TOI said that he was thankful to chief minister Akhilesh Yadav for showing his confidence in him. He said,"I am prepared to contest election from Cantt seat and this time I will win for sure". On being asked about the reason of his confidence in winning the seat, Roomi said, "I have worked a lot for the constituency and people have faith in me". He however refused to comment on being questioned about the candidature of Atiq Ahmad.
Abdul Aziz, a local of Rail Bazar area which comes under Cantt assembly seat while reacting to the candidature of Roomi said that he had worked on the ground for the past several years for which he has been rewarded by the chief minister by giving him the party ticket. The good thing about Roomi is that he is always available to the people, Abdul added.
Mohd Salik, a resident of Faithfulganj, which also falls in Cantt assembly seat said, "We were expecting that SP would give ticket to Parvez Ansari from Cantt seat but the party preferred Roomi. If he wins, we hope he will serve the people of his constituency well", he said
Meanwhile, amid talks of a possible alliance with Congress in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, eyebrows are being raised in the Congress party as Samajwadi Party has announced the name of Omprakash Misra as its candidate for KidwaiNagar seat from where Ajay Kapoor of the Congress is a siting MLA.
On the Cantt seat, except BJP, all other parties are relying on the Muslim candidates. BJP has once again fielded its sitting MLA Raghunandan Bhadauria while Congress is yet to announce its candidate from the Cantt seat.
For Kalyanpur, Sisamau and Bithoor assembly seats, SP has again fielded its last asembly election winners--Satish Nigam, Irfan Solanki and Munindra Shukla respectively. For Aryanagar eat, SP has announced the name of AmitabhBajpai, a senior party leader.