Sarita Yadav, who claims to be the daughter-in-law of sitting Tilhar MLA Roshanlal Verma, has announced to contest against her "father-in-law" on a Rashtriya Samaj Party ticket from the same seat.
The Tilhar Assembly seat in the Shahjahanpur district of U.P. goes to the polls in the second phase of the Assembly elections on February 14.
Mr. Verma had recently quit the BJP and joined the Samajwadi Party, and was given the SP ticket from Tilhar.
Mr. Verma’s alleged daughter-in-law Ms. Sarita has accused him of illegally grabbing people's land. Sarita Yadav told reporters on Sunday that she is contesting against her father-in-law Roshanlal Verma.
She alleged that Mr. Verma has illegally encroached upon the land of many people in the Tilhar area and filed fake cases against a large number of Yadavs and people from the Muslim community.
Even the land in front of Nigohi police station, registered in the name of her husband Vinod Kumar, has been occupied by Mr. Verma, she claimed.
Ms. Sarita said her husband died in 2019 and she along with her eight-year-old daughter is contacting voters in the area and seeking votes. If she is elected as an MLA, she will free all the land grabbed by her father-in-law, Ms. Sarita said.
Mr. Verma has denied Ms. Sarita being his daughter-in-law but Ms. Sarita claimed herself to be Mr. Verma's daughter-in-law in the posters printed for her campaign.
Mr. Verma had said earlier, "She (Sarita Yadav) is making false claims. She has no proof of it. She is hatching a conspiracy to malign our image. She is in the fray but this will not make any difference to my image."
Apart from Mr. Verma, the SP candidate from the Tilhar Assembly seat, 14 candidates including BJP's Salona Kushwaha, Congress' Rajneesh Gupta and BSP's Faizan Ali are in the fray.
