MAU: Accompanied by Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak, Samajwadi Party rebel and BJP candidate Dara Singh Chauhan on Wednesday filed his nomination papers for the bypoll to Ghosi Assembly seat here.
The September 5 bypoll is being seen as a straight contest between the ruling BJP and the SP as the Congress and the BSP have not announced their candidates for it.
The counting of votes will take place on September 8. Elected last year on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket, Chauhan quit the party and joined the BJP in July. The Ghosi bypoll was necessitated following the resignation of Chauhan.
During the filing of nomination, Chauhan was also accompanied by state BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary, MP from neighbouring Azamgarh Dinesh Lal Yadav, Power Minister A K Sharma, Transport Minister Dayashankar Singh, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar, and Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal (NISHAD) party chief Sanjay Nishad.
Later, senior BJP leaders and alliance partners attended a public meeting at Bapu Inter College here.
Though the bypoll outcome will have no major impact on the BJP's tally in the UP Legislative Assembly, the party will make all efforts to win the seat to assert its popularity among the non-Yadav OBC voters ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year.
The SP, which has announced Sudhakar Singh, a Rajput, as its candidate for the seat, would also like to defeat the BJP to send a strong message to its core voters in the state.
The bypoll to the Ghosi constituency is the first election in the state to take place after the formation of the opposition bloc INDIA and the SBSP joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Chauhan was the forest and environment minister in the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath government during its first term before he resigned from the Council of Ministers in January 2022 and joined the SP.
SP's Sudhakar Singh was the MLA from Ghosi from 2012 to 2017.
Earlier, he had represented the Nathupur (Madhuban after delimitation) Assembly seat.
In the 2017 UP Assembly elections, he had lost to BJP's Fagu Chauhan from Ghosi.
In the 403-member UP Legislative Assembly, the BJP has 255 MLAs, while its allies Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD party have 13 MLAs and six MLAs, respectively.
New NDA partner SBSP has six MLAs in the Assembly.
The SP has 108 MLAs, its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has nine MLAs while the Congress and Jansatta Dal Loktantrik have two MLAs each and the BSP has one MLA.