Lucknow: The BJP on Thursday, finally, announced its candidates for eight of the nine assembly seats up for bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, ending speculations over its candidate list.

Friday is the last date for filing nominations, with polling set for November 13.

The party made a strategic move by fielding Anujesh Yadav from Karhal, a constituency vacated by SP leader Akhilesh Yadav after he became an MP, reported The Times of India.

The seat, considered a stronghold of the SP's first family, will now see a high-profile Yadav versus Yadav contest, as SP has put up Akhilesh’s nephew, Tej Pratap, against Anujesh.

Anujesh Yadav is the brother-in-law of SP MP Dharmendra Yadav.

Dharmendra Yadav happens to be a cousin of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.

Anujesh and his wife Sandhya switched their allegiance to the BJP in 2017, following tensions in the SP.

Although Sandhya lost the 2021 zila panchayat elections to SP’s Pramod Kumar, the couple’s move has stirred political intrigue in the region.

Despite pressure from its ally, the Nishad Party, which demanded two seats—Katehari and Manjhawan—the BJP rejected their request. The party also secured a nomination for Mithilesh Pal, a party functionary, to contest from Meerapur on an RLD ticket, the TOI report said.

In the 2022 assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party had won four of these nine seats—Karhal, Kundarki, Katehari, and Sisamau—while the BJP secured three (Ghaziabad, Khair, and Phulpur), and the Nishad Party and RLD won one each (Manjhawan and Meerapur, respectively).

This time, the BJP has placed a significant emphasis on OBC candidates, with four out of its eight nominees from this community, signaling its intention to rally the backward caste vote.

Ramvir Singh, a Thakur, will contest from Kundarki, a Muslim-majority constituency in Moradabad. Singh previously ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 and 2017 elections against SP’s Mohammad Rizwan.

In Ghaziabad, BJP district president Sanjiv Sharma, a Brahmin, has been selected to run for the seat vacated by BJP MLA Atul Garg.

Khair will see Surendra Diler, a Valmiki Dalit and son of former BJP MP Rajvir Diler, contest the reserved seat in Aligarh.

For Phulpur, Deepak Patel, son of former Phulpur MP Keshari Devi Patel, will run for the assembly seat. In Katehari, the BJP has fielded Dharmaraj Nishad, a former BSP MLA who joined the BJP before the 2022 elections.

His selection underscores the BJP’s focus on consolidating support from the Nishad community.

In Majhawan, Suchismita Maurya, who won the seat in 2017, will contest again after the bypoll was triggered by the election of Nishad Party MLA Vinod Bind to the Lok Sabha.

In Sisamau, Suresh Awasthi, who contested and lost in 2017, has been nominated to run again following the conviction of SP MLA Irfan Solanki.