BJP fields Ravi Kishan from Yogi’s bastion Gorakhpur

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 15

The BJP today announced popular Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan as its nominee for Gorakhpur — the high-profile constituency that the controversial Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, has represented for five consecutive terms in the Lok Sabha before the saffron party lost it to the Samajwadi Party’s joint candidate Praveen Nishad in the 2018 bypolls.

Nishad, who delivered an embarrassing blow to the BJP in the Chief Minister’s ”garh” in the byelections last year but has now joined it, has been fielded from Sant Kabir Nagar, replacing the sitting MP Sharad Tripathi, who was recently seen beating a local party MLA with shoes in full view of cameras.

While in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Adityanath won Gorakhpur by over three lakh votes, in the byelections the patry candidate Upendra Dutt Shukla lost to Nishad with a narrow margin after the SP and the BSP came to an understanding to field only one candidate to avoid division of votes there.

The saffron party had a stronghold on the constituency since the former head of the Gorakhnath Math, Adityanath’s mentor Avaidyanath, won it on a BJP ticket in 1991.

Adityanath, who had been winning there since 1998, vacated the seat after he was made the Chief Minister in 2017. The Nishad community, to which Praveen Nishad belongs, is the second largest demographic group in Gorakhpur.

Apart from Kishan and Nishad, the BJP has named Sangam Lal Gupta from Pratapgarh, Mukut Bihari from Ambedkar Nagar, Ramapati Ram Tripathi from Deoria, KP Singh from Jaunpur and Ramesh Bind from Bhadohi.

With this, the BJP has announced 421 candidates so far. It is yet to announce candidates for Delhi’s seven seats, Punjab’s three, Chandigarh’s one, and Madhya Pradesh’s five seats.

Another actor in fray against Akhilesh

• What’s interesting is the BJP's reliance on glamour in this election. Against SP chief Akhilesh Yadav in Azamgarh, the BJP has chosen another Bhojpuri actor-singer Dinesh Lal Yadav, popularly known as Niruhua, who till recently was an SP supporter

• In Rampur, two-time SP, MP Jaya Prada is contesting on the BJP ticket while in Mathura sitting Mathura MP Hema Malini is once again in the fray