The BJP fielded Aditi Singh, who defected from the Congress to join it, and Asim Arun, who recently resigned from the IPS, in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections on Friday, along with a list of 85 additional candidates.
Current MLA Hariom Yadav, a distant relative of Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, is also on the list. Hariom Yadav just left the opposition party.
Singh and Yadav will compete for their present seats of Rae Bareli and Sirsaganj, respectively, while Arun, a Dalit, will seek for a reserved seat in Kannauj. The Rae Bareli assembly seat is part of the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency, which is represented by Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president.
Nitin Aggarwal, the Deputy Speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly who also defected from the SP to join the BJP, will run from Hardoi. With the addition of 15 women to the party’s new list of candidates, the total number of names announced for the seven-phase election to the 403-member assembly has risen to 195.
