BJP giving assembly ticket to several leaders who lost in parliamentary polls
The foremost name in this list is that of Rani Pakshalika Singh, who is the wife of sitting Bah MLA and former UP Minister Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh and had recently defected to the BJP from SP with her husband.
In Short
- BJP giving assembly ticket to several leaders who lost in parliamentary polls.
- BJP candidate Ch. Babulal displeased Rani Pakshalika Singh got ticket.
- For most politicians, politics is not a mere career choice.
In Braj region politics, there are currently several politicians testing their mettle to win a state legislative seat in the assembly elections this year, who had lost their bid in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Not discouraged by the debilitating defeat in the parliamentary elections, they are looking at the assembly elections as their hope for reviving their political careers.
The foremost name in this list is that of Rani Pakshalika Singh, who is the wife of sitting Bah MLA and former UP Minister Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh and had recently defected to the BJP from SP with her husband. Pakshalika Singh had been nominated as the SP candidate from Kheragarh and Aridaman Singh was the party's candidate from Bah. Now, Aridaman is sitting out these elections and his wife will contest his seat on a BJP Ticket.
Interestingly, Pakshalika had contested the parliamentary elections against the BJP candidate Ch. Babulal and had managed to get 211,339 votes on the Fatehpur Sikri seat. She had been ahead of both BJP's Babulal and BSP's Seema Upadhyay in vote tally on Bah assembly area, primarily because her husband is the sitting MLA on this seat.
However, the situation has changed this time and Babulal is displeased with Pakshalika getting the ticket and it is quite possible that she may face internal opposition within the party ranks as her husband is no longer contesting elections and is also losing his influence in the region due to growing discontent against him among the local populace.
Similarly, former BJP OBC Morcha president SP Singh Baghel, who had lost the parliamentary elections to Ramgopal Yadav's son Akshay Yadav, is now again in the fray, contesting from the Tundla assembly seat. Although Baghel had lost the overall election, he had been quite ahead of Akshay Yadav in vote tally of Tundla constituency, getting 104,683 votes.
Another candidate contesting on BJP ticket from Firozabad's Sirsaganj seat is Jaiveer Singh, who is a relative of Rajasthan Governor and former UP CM Kalyan Singh. Jaiveer had contested the 2014 parliamentary election on BSP ticket from Farrukhabad but had lost miserably. Now he is trying his luck in the assembly elections.
Commenting on this scenario, Imamuddin, a senior citizen in Agra said that for some people, politics is not a mere career choice, but they are habitual of the political portfolios and the associated perks and cannot bear losing them. Which is why they keep changing their loyalties and go with the party that has the most likelihood of winning. Such leaders are now displeased at being skipped in the ticket distribution and are burning effigies of BJP leaders.