Yadav clan member’s name doing rounds for BJP pick for Karhal seat

Lucknow: The announcement of SP candidate for the Karhal assembly bypoll seat on Wednesday started the buzz over who would be the BJP pick in the high-profile seat of the Yadav belt.
Karhal seat was vacated by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav after his election to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj. SP has decided to field Tej Pratap Yadav, the grandson of late Mulayam Singh Yadav.
BJP sources said the party is mulling over four names — foremost being Anujesh Singh Yadav, who is related to the SP's first family.Anujesh is the husband of SP MP Dharmendra Yadav's sister, Sandhya Yadav.
Sandhya is the former chairperson of Mainpuri zila panchayat. She switched to BJP in 2017 after SP members brought a no-confidence motion against her amid rumours of her and Anujesh hobnobbing with the BJP. In 2021, she contested the zila panchayat member election on a BJP ticket but lost to SP's Pramod Kumar.
Anujesh's nomination could stoke a Yadav versus Yadav contest, akin to 2002 when BJP had fielded Sovran Singh Yadav, an aide of Mulayam, who defeated SP's Anil Yadav by a slender margin of less than 1,000 votes. Sovran later switched to SP and won the seat in 2007, 2012, and 2017. He eventually made way for Akhilesh, who won the seat by a margin of nearly 70,000 votes in 2022.
BJP sources said UP BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary and state general secretary (Organisation) are in Delhi to draw finer contours of the poll strategy before the party takes a decision on Karhal candidate.
The second name under consideration is of Prem Singh Shakya, who had contested against Mulayam in Mainpuri in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but lost by around 90,000 votes. BJP had propped Shakya by getting him elected as the chairman of UP Rajya Nirman Sahkari Sangh last year.
BJP is also considering the candidature of Virendra Shakya, the vice-president of BJP's Mainpuri unit. Shakya is learnt to have approached the party brass to stake claim for Karhal ticket.
The name of Shivam Singh Chauhan, a Rajput, too, is doing the rounds. Shivam is the Mainpuri district president of Akhil Bhartiya Kshatriya Mahasabha. BJP sources said the party plans to consolidate the Rajput community, which has a sizable presence in Mainpuri.
Former district president of Mainpuri, Pradeep Singh, said the party would hit the ground running in Karhal once the candidate is announced. "The party will expose the Samajwadi Party, which has only been supporting candidates from the Yadav family," he said.