Dimple Yadav, the former wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, has maintained a huge lead in the prestige battle for the Samajwadi Party bastion of Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh. The seat was vacated after the death of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh’s father, in October. Challenging her is BJP’s Raghuraj Singh Shakya, who is said to be a close associate of Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Yadav. In the early trends, Dimple Yadav has already maintained a lead of almost 1 lakh votes. This is said to be greater than the reserve that the SP patriarch had in the last election.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Mulayam Singh Yadav – fondly remembered as Netaji – won by a margin of 94,000 votes when even the BSP was in alliance with his party and he declared it his last election. He won the mandate five times before. Elections were held in Mainpuri on Monday apart from two assembly seats in the state – Rampur and Khatauli. The state witnessed infighting between the Samajwadi Party and the BJP as they accused each other of violating the code of conduct.
Akhilesh Yadav and his party accused the security forces of acting at the behest of the ruling party, while the BJP accused the SP of hooliganism. “The Mainpuri district administration is acting at the behest of the ruling party,” Yadav told reporters in Mainpuri on Monday, “It seems that the police have been informed not to allow SP workers to vote in Mainpuri and Rampur. The police have been biased since the campaign and have been deployed to prevented party supporters from going to our meetings,” he said.
The representatives of both parties also turned to the representatives of the electoral commission. Earlier this year, when state elections were held in Uttar Pradesh, Yadav leveled allegations against the BJP, accusing the party of violating the code of conduct. Meanwhile, Mainpuri has witnessed a fierce pre-poll battle. Samajwadi Party MP – Ram Gopal Yadav – further claimed on polling day that Dimple Yadav will break Mulayam Singh Yadav’s records in the constituency. “Dimple Yadav (the party’s by-election candidate) will win with three times the number of votes that Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) got,” he said. Mulayam Singh Yadav died at the age of 82 after a long illness.
After his death, Akhilesh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav – whose relations took a nosedive after the February and March state elections – mended their ties as Shivpal Yadav was seen supporting daughter-in-law Dimple amid intense campaigning. He also drew attacks from UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who accused him of switching sides after what appeared to be rapprochement between him and the BJP earlier this year.
But this and the downgrading of his Shivpal’s security only further pushed Akhilesh and Shivpal. “If BJP candidate Raghuraj Singh Shakya considers me a ‘guru’ (master), then as a good ‘shishya’ (disciple) he should not have attacked my daughter-in-law. Raghuraj Singh kept me in the dark and betrayed me,” Shivpal said during the campaign. A massive three-tier security arrangement was put in place ahead of the counting of votes for the high-profile constituency, with the Central Paramilitary Military Force (CPMF) manning the isolation cordon, while the Provincial Armed Police (PAC) provided security in the inner circle and the police manning the outer cordon at the counting site.
