Amid the narrative of a two cornered fight in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, is the seat of Zahoorabad, which is an exception to the rule, and is presenting the BJP with quite a dilemma.
Here, Om Prakash Rajbhar, president of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) who is the sitting MLA and ally of the Samajwadi Party (SP), after breaking away from the BJP, is facing a challenge not just from Kallichran Rajbhar of the BJP, but from former MLA Shadab Fatima.
In the series of Saffron vs Red-Yellow fights across Eastern U.P., this seat has seen a cobalt blue holdout of the BSP. Ms Fatima, who hails from same village as Ghazipur's most famous son, writer Rahi Masoom Raza, won this seat in 2012 on an SP ticket, the first time that the party won the seat, was a Minister in the Akhilesh Yadav-led government, and is credited with much of the development work done in the area. This includes getting Qasimabad (in Ghazipur) declared a "Tehsil" , an administrative upgradation that affects funding and other works there, as well as getting many roads, a hospital and a PWD guest house sanctioned in the area. In 2017, she joined Shivpal Yadav's breakway faction of SP, and O.P. Rajbhar won the seat as an ally of the BJP. This time around, with Shivpal Yadav reconciled with his nephew, she hoped to get the ticket but found the SBSP chief Rajbhar as a stumbling block as he had switched sides to the SP.
