Will SP lose Azamgarh and Rampur seats before BJP’s ‘trump cards’?

Lucknow: Elections to both Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats are to be held on June 23. If BJP wins even one of these seats, it will be a big setback for the Samajwadi Party as both the seats are heavily influenced by SP. In the last Lok Sabha elections, Akhilesh Yadav himself had contested from Azamgarh and got more than 60 per cent votes. Before him, Mulayam Singh Yadav had won from this seat in the 2014 elections. Thus it is a secured seat of the party and the Mulayam family. Similarly, Azam Khan, who was the party’s Muslim face in Rampur, had won and the seat fell vacant due to his resignation. SP cannot afford to lose any seat, on the other hand BJP is laying cards to win both the seats.

The first card seems to be fitting the bill. The BSP, which indirectly helped the BJP in the assembly elections, has announced that it will not contest the Rampur seat and will field Shah Alam from the Azamgarh seat. This bet is going to help BJP, which wants to create a oneon-one contest in Rampur. The second ‘trump card’ of BJP is Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, whom the party will field from Rampur. If Azam Khan does not come out openly to defeat BJP on this seat, then BJP will win. Similarly, in Azamgarh, if the BJP fielded a member of the Mulayam family, the contest would become interesting. In response, if Akhilesh contests his wife, then the contest will be of equal powers!