UP Assembly polls: BJP fields rebel Congress leader Aditi Singh from Rae Bareli, ex-IPS officer Asim Arun from Kannauj

The list also includes incumbent MLA Hariom Yadav, a relative of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. He has been fielded from his current seat Sirsaganj.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday (January 21, 2022) released another list of 85 candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. 

The party fielded Aditi Singh, the rebel Congress leader, from Rae Bareli and announced that Asim Arun, who recently quit the IPS, will contest the Kannauj Assembly seat.

Aditi Singh, notably, is a sitting MLA from constituency falling under Congress president Sonia Gandhi's Rae Bareli parliamentary seat. 

The list also includes incumbent MLA Hariom Yadav, a relative of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who quit the opposition party recently and joined the BJP. He has been fielded from his current seat Sirsaganj.

In the last assembly election in 2017, out of the five assembly seats in Rae Bareli, the Congress and the BJP had won from two constituencies each while one had gone to the Samajwadi Party.

The BJP also announced its candidates for assembly constituencies in the Lakhimpur Kheri district. In Lakhimpur Kheri district, the party has repeated Shashank Verma (from Nighasan), Arvind Giri (from Gola Gokrannath), Manju Tyagi (from Srinagar), Yogesh Verma (from Lakhimpur Kheri), Saurabh Singh Sonu (from Kasta-SC), Lokendra Pratap Singh (from Mohammadi) and Harvindar Romi Sahni (from Palia).

उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव-2022 के लिए घोषित सभी प्रत्याशियों को हार्दिक बधाई एवं शुभकामनाएं #आएगी_बीजेपी_ही pic.twitter.com/uayA98P6Ux — BJP Uttar Pradesh (@BJP4UP) January 21, 2022

उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव-2022 के लिए घोषित सभी प्रत्याशियों को हार्दिक बधाई एवं शुभकामनाएं #आएगी_बीजेपी_ही pic.twitter.com/fOs39wlMv4 — BJP Uttar Pradesh (@BJP4UP) January 21, 2022

Lakhimpur Kheri has been in the news recently after four protesting farmers were run over by vehicles. Four others, including a journalist and two BJP workers, were also killed in the violence in October last year. Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra's son Ashish Mishra has been named as an accused in the violence.

With the fresh list of candidates, which include 15 women, the total number of names announced by the party for the seven-phase election to the 403-member assembly has reached 195.

Uttar Pradesh will go to the polls between February 10 and March 7 and the results will be announced on March 10. 

(With agency inputs)