Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022: From Baby Rani Maurya to Mriganka Singh, Here is The List of Five Key Candidates in Phase 1

With days left for the first phase of much-awaited assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, the politics in the state, has intensified.

With the state witnessing a new political drama each passing day, the possibility of a fierce contest across the state looks certain.

In the three elections since 2014, two Lok Sabha elections and one assembly election, the BJP has been notching up a formidable vote share: in excess of 45 per cent. And the party has been leading in an overwhelming majority of Assembly segments. Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022: From Yogi Adityanath's Bastion Gorakhpur Urban To Akhilesh Yadav's Stronghold Karhal Assembly Seat, Here Are 7 Key Constituencies

In the last Assembly polls, the BJP won three constituencies with a margin in excess of one lakh votes, and eight constituencies with a margin in excess of 70,000 votes. And of the five seats the BJP lost in the region, the margin of victory in two places was less than 5,000 votes.

Here is the list of five key candidates in the first phase of the Polls

The BJP's Uttar Pradesh vice president Pankaj Singh has filed his nomination papers to contest the assembly elections from Gautam Buddh Nagar's Noida, the seat he won in the 2017 state polls.

Singh's nomination papers were filed by his name proposers, including Gautam Buddh Nagar Lok Sabha MP Mahesh Sharma and Noida unit president Manoj Gupta at the district election office, party's local spokesperson Tanmay Shankar said.

The 43-year-old Pankaj Singh is the son of Defence Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Rajnath Singh.

Singh was elected to the UP assembly for the first time in 2017 elections when he got over 1.62 lakh (64.29 per cent) of the 2.54 lakh votes polled.

Dharam Singh Saini was the Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ayush, Food Security and Drug Administration. Saini, earlier with the BSP, had joined the BJP in 2016 with former UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya. Dharam Singh Saini is said to be a close aide of Maurya.  Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022: From Yogi Adityanath to Akhilesh Yadav, Here Are CM Probables In UP

Dr Saini has been a MLA for three straight terms. During the 14th and 15th Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh he represented the Sarsawa assembly constituency of Uttar Pradesh. During the 15th Legislative Assembly, he was also a minister.

Once an educationist, Mriganka Singh is now into her third attempt to wrest her father’s legacy. Hukum Singh began his political career from the Congress in 1974, when he first won the Kairana Assembly seat. He won the seat twice again, one of those times on a Janta Party (Secular) ticket. After a series of losses, he joined the BJP in 1995 and went on to represent the Kairana seat for four terms. He lost the 2009 general elections, but was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014.

The BJP has been raising the alleged exodus of Hindu families from Kairana following the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 in the campaign. Both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Union minister Amit Shah have talked of it. Mriganka calls it a “legitimate concern”, adding that the sense of “security” under Adityanath had convinced some of the families who left to come back

Baby Rani Maurya, a former Uttarakhand governor, as its Dalit face in the state. The move aims at reaching out to Dalit voters, which form a major chunk of Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party’s vote base. Both Maurya and Mayawati belong to the dominant Jatav sub-caste, which accounts for more than half of the Dalit community.

Of the 21 per cent Dalit vote bank in Uttar Pradesh, Jatavs form a sizeable chunk — about 11 per cent — and this community has been the mainstay of Mayawati’s political journey. Any depletion in the Jatav vote base will spell bad news for the BSP. Agra rural sc.

The Samajwadi Party’s decision to field Nahid Hasan from Kairana in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections has drawn severe criticism from the BJP with the ruling party accusing Akhilesh Yadav of giving tickets to “goons”. 

Arrested by the UP Police under Gangster Act on January 16, Hasan’s nomination was accepted by the returning officer on Monday. is an accused in 16 cases lodged in police stations of Shamli, Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts. All the cases are pending in courts and Hasan has so far not been convicted in any of them.

Justifying the ticket to Hasan, Samajwadi Party made public the information about the criminal cases against Hasan while asserting that he has done “a lot of humanitarian work and helped in many social causes.”

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 06, 2022 02:53 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).