Lucknow/Muzaffarnagar (UP), Nov 18 (PTI) The Meerapur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar witnessed top leaders of different parties battling it out to gain the attention of voters in the key west Uttar Pradesh constituency on Monday, the last day of the campaign for the November 20 bypolls.

The RLD won the seat in the 2022 assembly polls fighting in alliance with the Samajwadi Party. But it is contesting the by-polls as part of the NDA, a switch that has made this contest interesting. The BJP rewarded the RLD for the switch by making party chief Jayant Chaudhary a Union minister.

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This is thus the first electoral test of the new-found BJP-RLD alliance. Aware perhaps that the alliance's prestige is at stake, Chaudhary campaigned for his party candidate from the seat.

Chaudhary's former ally and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar too were in Meerapur to seek support for their party candidates.

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Election results in Meerapur will be significant especially for the Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal, as it will try to retain the seat it won in the 2022 UP Assembly election and send a strong message to Samajwadi Party.

The SP on the other hand will try to turn the tables by bagging this seat from its former ally, and flex its political muscle in the region.

A little over 3.24 lakh voters will decide the electoral fortunes of 11 candidates in the fray with the main contest between Sumbul Rana of the SP and Mithilesh Pal of RLD.

The Bahujan Samaj Party, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) have also fielded candidates from the assembly seat.

But Union minister Jayant Chaudhary sounded confident the outcome will be in his party candidate's favour.

"The atmosphere is excellent. People are happy and the cadres are enthusiastic; something not generally seen in bye-elections," he told newspersons after seeking vote for his party leader.

Told that his former ally Akhilesh Yadav and Bhim Army's Chandrashekhar were also in Meerapur to campaign, Chaudhary said, "Today is the last day of campaigning and thus everybody is appealing for votes. We have appealed to the people to come out and cast vote on November 20,"

Taking a dig at Yadav, he said those who were talking about the PDA (Pichhada, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) did not accord respect to the framers of the Constitution.

Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) chief Chandrashekhar told reporters that his party is "winning" the Meerapur seat "on the basis of hardwork of party workers and blessings of saints and gurus".

When asked to comment on the 'batenge toh katenge' remark of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Chandrashekhar said, "Have you seen the Mahabharat? Brothers stood face-to-face with each other, and fought the 'Dharma Yuddh'. Our party is contesting the polls, so that people here can be empowered."

"(He should) speak on employment, price rise, education, health, roads and why farmers are not getting a price for their produce," Azad said.

AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) chief Asaduddin Owaisi addressed a public meeting in the constituency in support of Mohd Arshad.

Meanwhile, RLD spokesperson Ankur Saxena said his party is going to retain the seat, while the NDA will make a clean sweep by winning all the constituencies where bypolls are taking place.

The bye-election in Meerapur has been necessitated after its sitting legislator Chandan Chauhan of the RLD got elected to the Lok Sabha from Bijnor. Eleven candidates, including Sumbul Rana, are in the fray for the bypoll.

Other seats where bypolls are being held are Katehari in Ambedkar Nagar, Karhal in Mainpuri, Meerapur in Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad, Majhawan in Mirzapur, Sishamau in Kanpur city, Khair in Aligarh, Phulpur in Prayagraj and Kundarki in Moradabad.

Eight of these seats fell vacant after their MLAs were elected as Lok Sabha MPs. The bypoll in the Sisamau seat is being held as Samajwadi Party MLA Irfan Solanki was convicted in a criminal case and resultantly disqualified.

In the 2022 assembly polls, Sishamau, Katehari, Karhal and Kundarki were held by the SP, while the BJP won Phulpur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan and Khair.

The Meerapur seat was held by the RLD, which is now an ally of the BJP in the NDA.

The Congress is not contesting the bypolls and supporting its INDIA bloc partner Samajwadi Party, while the Bahujan Samaj Party is contesting all nine seats on its own.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)