The Bahujan Samaj Party on April 16 released its fifth list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, fielding from Jaunpur Srikala Singh, the wife of former MP Dhananjay Singh who was sentenced to seven years in jail last month in a 2020 case.
The Mayawati-led party also changed its candidate from Mainpuri, replacing Gulshan Dev Shakya with Shiv Prasad Yadav, who will be up against the Samajwadi Party's Dimple Yadav and the BJP's Jaiveer Singh, a State government Minister.
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The BSP named Athar Jamal Lari from the high-profile Varanasi seat, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is contesting as a BJP candidate.
According to the fresh list, Muslim Khan will contest from the Budaun seat, Chhotey Lal Gangwar from Bareilly, Udayraj Verma from Sultanpur, Kranti Pandey from Farrukhabad.
Mayank Dwivedi will be the BSP nominee from Banda, Khwaja Samsuddin from Domariyaganj, Lalan Singh Yadav from Ballia and Umesh Kumar Singh from Ghazipur.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP contested the polls along with the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). The BJP had won 62 seats and its ally Apna Dal (S) two seats, brushing aside the challenge of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.
However, the BSP was the biggest gainer in the alliance with 10 seats.
Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP) won five seats while the RLD could not open its account in the polls. The Congress won the lone Rae Bareli seat from where Sonia Gandhi had contested.
In March, an MP/MLA court in Jaunpur sentenced former MP Dhananjay Singh to seven years in jail in the 2020 kidnapping and extortion case of Namami Gange project manager Abhinav Singhal.
Presently with the Janata Dal (United), Singh was reportedly preparing to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Jaunpur. But the conviction now makes him ineligible under the Representation of the People Act to contest election.
Singh served as an MP in the 15th Lok Sabha from 2009 to 2014 as a Bahujan Samaj Party member, and is described as 'Purvanchal Bahubali'.
In 2011, BSP president Mayawati expelled him from the party on charges of anti-party activities.
