Azad Samaj Party (ASP) chief Chandrashekhar Azad announced on Thursday, 20 January, that he will contest polls from Gorakhpur Sadar against Uttar Pradesh (UP) Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.
While releasing a list of ASP candidates for 33 seats, the ASP chief had said on Tuesday that his party would fight alone in the UP elections and will not forge an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP).
After the alliance could not materialise, Azad was quoted as saying, "We thought this is a new Samajwadi Party and there will be some change in it. We can speak about social justice... We wanted unity of the bahujan and we were banking on him (Akhilesh Yadav), but yesterday we felt that our hopes had been shattered. I feel that Akhilesh-ji does not need us. All the best to him... we will fight our own polls," news agency PTI reported.
Speaking on the same, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said, "I had allotted two seats to him, but he (Chandrashekhar Azad) received some call and refused to be part of the alliance," Times of India reported.
After denying the alliance with the SP, Azad had also said that their fight was with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
As per NDTV report, Azad told reporters, "I am the only politician in the last five years who has spent half that time in jail. Because of this government. I will not let the Chief Minister of this government go to the Assembly. That is why I am fighting against him. The opposition is welcome to fight, but I am going to fight against him anyway."
Meanwhile, the BJP had announced Adityanath’s candidature from the ‘super-safe’ constituency on 15 January, scuttling rumours of him contesting from Ayodhya.
There are few seats that the BJP has dominated so comprehensively as Gorakhpur. The BJP hasn't lost the Gorakhpur seat since 1989, except on one occasion.
The only defeat came in 2002 at the hands of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha but that too isn't entirely a defeat as the Mahasabha candidate, Dr Radha Mohan Das Agrawal, was backed by Adityanath against the official BJP nominee Shiv Pratap Shukla. Adityanath was then an MP from Gorakhpur.
(With inputs from The Times of India and PTI.)
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