BJP Announces Candidate For Milkipur Assembly Bypoll: Fields Chandrabhan Paswan, Known For Good Rapport With All Castes

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday (14 January) declared its candidate for the Milkipur assembly bypoll, nominating Chandrabhan Paswan for the Scheduled Caste (SC)-reserved seat.

The bypoll for this seat in the Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh was necessitated when its member of the legislative assembly (MLA) Awadhesh Prasad won the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Faizabad.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) had already declared his son Ajit Prasad as the candidate for the bypoll. However, the bypoll could not be conducted earlier due to a pending court case against Awadhesh Prasad.

In November, nine assembly seats of UP voted for the bypoll. Seven of these seats were won by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), while the opposition SP could win only two- Karhal and Sishamau.

Buoyant by these victories, the BJP is making extensive efforts to win in Milkipur, where it lost in the 2022 assembly election as the incumbent BJP MLA Baba Goraknath was defeated by SP's Awadhesh Prasad.

Giving a ticket to Paswan may help the BJP as he has a good rapport with upper castes, as per Swarajya correspondent Abhishek Kumar, who recently reported from Milkipur.

Reportedly, Brahmins and other upper castes were not happy with Baba Goraknath as he allegedly encouraged fake cases under the SC/ST Act and hence, by cutting is ticket, the BJP did the right thing.

The voting is scheduled for 5 February, along with the Delhi assembly election and Erode East assembly bypoll. The results will be declared on 8 February, sending messages to the BJP and the SP.