UP Assembly bypolls: Congress names candidates for Suar and Bangarmau seats

The Congress on Sunday became the first political party to start declaring candidates for the forthcoming Assembly bypolls for eight seats in Uttar Pradesh.

The party named its candidates for two of the eight seats. Haider Ali Khan alias Hamzah Mian will contest from Suar (Rampur) and Aarti Vajpayee from Bangarmau (Unnao).

All India Congress Committee general secretary Mukul Wasnik announced the two names saying that the Congress President, Sonia Gandhi has approved them.

The two candidates would make the contest interesting and tough on the respective seats as both are local and are from strong political families that had won elections in the respective area multiple times, Congress leaders claimed.

Haider Ali Khan is the son of Nawab Kazim Ali and the grandson of Begum Noor Bano. Kazim Ali had won the Suar assembly seat thrice as Congress candidate while Noor Bano had twice been a Congress MP from Rampur. This would be Haider Ali Khan’s first assembly election.

Aarti Vajpayee is the daughter of late Gopinath Dixit, a former UP minister and was also related to late Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit. She had contested the same seat in 2012 as an independent candidate.

“Both our candidates are heavyweights and are local. They have the trust of people,” said Anshu Awasthi, a UPCC spokesperson.

Elections are likely to be announced soon for Malhani (Jaunpur), Suar (Rampur), Tundla (Firozabad), Bulandshahr (Bulandshahr), Naugawan Sadat (Amroha), Ghatampur (Kanpur City), Bangarmau (Unnao), and Deoria (Deoria) assembly seats. Of these Malhani and Suar were held by the Samajwadi Party and the rest of the six by BJP.

In the last by-polls in 2019 for 11 seats, the Congress had drawn a blank.

Bangarmau and Suar seats fell vacant following disqualification of the sitting MLAs on these seats. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Bangarmaul Kuldeep Singh Sengar was disqualified following his conviction (life sentence awarded to him in a rape case) and Samajwadi Party’s Mohammad Abdullah Azam’s election to Suar seat fell vacant after the Allahabad High Court declared his election invalid in a fake birth certificate issue.