LUCKNOW: Taking an early lead over his political rivals in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Chandrashekhar Azad-led Aazad Samaj Party (ASP-Kanshi Ram), on Friday announced potential candidates for 45 seats.
The candidates have currently been named as Prabharis (in-charges) and they would formally be declared as party candidates closer to the elections.
As per party state vice-president Saurabh Kishore, who is the prabhari of the Misrikh reserved seat, candidates for more seats would be announced in the coming days.
Kishore added that 18 of the 45 prabharis are from the Scheduled Castes (SCs), 16 from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 10 are Muslims, and one is a Sikh. The party has also named SC candidates for five unreserved seats, Chharra, Lucknow Cantonment, Govind Nagar, Vishwanathganj and Bikapur.
The breakup of prabharis named for 45 seats reflects the party’s intent to widen its support base among OBCs (16) and Muslims (10), with SCs (18) remaining its core vote base.
After Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), ASP (Kanshi Ram) is the second party to start announcing candidates. However, ASP is posing the most daunting challenge to Mayawati-led BSP as an alternative in Dalit politics in UP, with Dalits being the core vote base of both the BSP and the ASP.
Refusing to acknowledge the challenge from ASP, Mayawati, without naming Chandrashekhar, continues to accuse him of being a selfish leader propped up by her political adversaries to weaken Dalit unity and undermine the Dalit movement launched by BSP founder president Kanshi Ram.
On the other hand, Chandrashekhar, who had initially offered an alliance with the BSP to consolidate Dalit politics in the state and even tried to align with the Samajwadi Party in the 2022 state Assembly elections, decided to go it alone after both party chiefs showed reluctance.
A party leader said candidates were being announced well in advance to give them sufficient time to work in their constituencies before the notification of elections.
However, the ASP is looking to consolidate the caste arithmetic of 85 per cent of the state electorate comprising SCs, OBCs and Muslims.
Chandrashekhar made his electoral debut by winning the Nagina Lok Sabha seat in 2024, defeating BJP’s Om Kumar by a margin of 1.51 lakh votes.
The ASP (KR) had contested 110 seats in the 2022 UP Assembly elections. It secured 0.13 per cent of the vote, and all its candidates forfeited their deposits.
