Fight for Mainpuri: People have united against 'unity' in Yadav clan, says BJP's pick Raghuraj Shakya

BJP's Mainpuri bypoll pick Raghuraj Singh Shakya asserts that it is wrong to dub him "selfish" as he joined the saffron party before the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections when Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav were together.

Shakya (58) was once a close associate of Shivpal, but quit his Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party to join the BJP earlier this year.

The BJP candidate, who will take on SP's Dimple Yadav, says he stood with Shivpal five years ago when no one sided with him after he fell out with Akhilesh following a bitter power struggle.

Shakya's comments are an apparent riposte to Shivpal's barb calling him "ambitious" and "selfish".

Asked about the Samajwadi Party's (SP) assertion that it would win the bypoll with a large margin after Akhilesh and Shivpal have joined hands once again, Shakya tells PTI, "When they have united, people have also united. This will ensure that the BJP emerges victorious." The bypoll has been necessitated due to the death of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Mainpuri has long been a pocket borough of his family.

Shakya's selection as the BJP candidate was read in the political circles as the saffron party's effort to harness his closeness with Shivpal who until then had not committed his support to the SP candidate.

The ruling party's calculation seems to have gone wrong as Shivpal later pledged support to daughter-in-law Dimple, burying the hatchet with his nephew.

Poll observers say after Yadavs, OBC Shakyas form the bulk of about 17 lakh voters in the Mainpuri Lok Saba constituency.

Facing the tough task of challenging the SP candidate in the seat represented by political heavyweight Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shakya dismisses sympathy factor helping his rival and asserts that people have taken a stand against "pariwarvad" (dynasticism).

He claims the saffron party will annex Mainpuri from the rival as it did in Azamgarh and Rampur.

Hitting back at Shivpal's remarks, Shakya says, "How can I be termed a selfish person? I joined the BJP before the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections when the uncle-nephew pair (referring to Shivpal and Akhilesh) had reunited.

"In 2017, when no one was siding with Shivpal Singh Yadav, it was Raghuraj Singh Shakya who firmly stood with him. In 2017, I did not get any ticket (for the assembly election), but I did not mind. But, now you have become one after leaving us," he adds. To a question that emotions will reign supreme in this bypoll especially after the death of Mulayam Singh, the BJP leader says, "This emotion is only among their people (SP workers). There is no such emotion among the people, and the people are not emotional towards them. If the public was emotional towards them, then they (SP leaders) would not have to move from one bylane to another and meet people. Why are they going from door-to-door now?" Canvassing for Dimple Yadav at a rally in Jaswant Nagar recently, Shivpal Yadav had said, "A person is roaming among you and seeking votes… He is saying that he is my ‘shishya'. "Leave being a disciple, he is not even my ‘chela’. Had he been so, he would not have left clandestinely. He is an ambitious, selfish and opportunist person," he had said, apparently referring to the BJP contender.

Shakya further adds that people are looking for a change in this bye-election.

"They are fed up of the terror unleashed by (Samajwadi Party) and the 'goonda raj' which was curbed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath," he says.

"... Besides Netaji's (Mulayam Singh Yadav) victory margin in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls was (only) over 90,000 votes," he says.

"The public is against them (the SP), and the public very well knows that whenever the (Yadav) family has united, it has only done so to deceive them," he says.

Asked for the reasons behind his confidence of wining the crucial seat, Shakya says he gets his confidence from people who are "showing their eagerness to organise an election programme of Shakya in their localities''.

On Alok Shakya, who was made the SP's district president of Mainpuri unit, the BJP candidate said he (Alok) was a state-level leader who was confined in the district while the community wants that he should have been made the SP chief for UP state unit.

Voting in Mainpuri will be held on December 5, while counting of votes will take place on December 8.