A day after the Samajwadi Party decided to name Azam Khan’s confidante Ruchi Vira as candidate for the Moradabad seat, the sitting MP, S.T. Hasan, on March 28 said he would not canvas for Ms. Vira ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Confusion prevailed among the ranks as the party leadership changed its candidate for the Gautam Buddh Nagar seat as well. Sources said they were reconsidering the Meerut candidate too. This was after the party had already changed its Bijnor candidate. For the Rampur seat, the leadership decided to stick to Mohibullah Nadvi, chief Akhilesh Yadav’s pick, after the candidature of Azam Khan loyalist Asim Raja was cancelled during the scrutiny process on Thursday.
Mr. Hasan said he continued to be a loyal SP soldier but could not humiliate his supporters who had worked for the party and prayed for his ticket. Making an indirect attack on Mr. Khan, he said Mr. Yadav was pressured into cancelling his ticket at the last minute. “I work for those who are suffering and in the present times, Muslims and Dalits are the most affected. I will continue to raise their voice,” he said.
When asked about Mr. Khan’s role in the change, he said media reports suggested that the senior leader was behind the decision. “He got me the ticket in 2019. If he has ensured that I don’t contest this time, I will remain grateful to him,” he said.
Mr. Hasan further said that sending an outsider would hurt the party’s prospects in the constituency. “The voting percentage would come down; Moradabad had suffered in the past when outsiders were imposed on the constituency,” he cautioned.
A source close to Mr. Hasan told The Hindu that the party president had sent the symbol for Mr. Hasan and the Rampur candidate through State president Naresh Uttam Patel. “But on the advice of a party leader, he opted to go to Rampur first and by the time he reached Moradabad, it was too late. Our team saw it as a lollipop to mollify us,” he alleged.
In Gautam Buddh Nagar, the party fielded Mahendra Nagar, replacing youth leader Rahul Awana. Dr. Nagar, a paediatrician, would take on Bharatiya Janata Party’s two-time MP Dr. Mahesh Sharma in what has now become a contest between two doctors. Party sources said Dr. Nagar, who shifted from Congress a couple of years back, had been the original choice. Then, the leadership decided to give in to the demands of the youth and picked Mr. Awana. Later, the senior leaders of the region concluded that Mr. Awana did not have the stature to take on the BJP heavyweight.
Similar sentiments were being expressed in Meerut where the party has fielded Supreme Court advocate Bhanu Pratap Singh. He was being described as an outsider who would find it difficult to take on BJP’s surprise choice Arun Govil without complete local support.
In this outsider-local divide, party workers in Rampur were busy underlining that Mr. Nadvi, the cleric of the Parliament Street mosque in New Delhi, had his roots in the Suar tehsil of the constituency.
