UP Election 2022: Bhim Army’s Chandrashekhar Azad vs Yogi Adityanath In Gorakhpur

Chandrashekhar Azad vs Yogi Adityanath In Gorakhpur: The first candidate to be declared against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur is army chief Bhim Chandrashekhar Azad.

The Dalit leader had earlier said he would run against Yogi Adityanath in the February-March elections. Today his party officially announced it, days after the BJP said Yogi Adityanath would contest the UP election in Gorakhpur Sadar.

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बाबासाहेब डॉo भीमराव अम्बेडकर जी व मान्यवर कांशीराम साहब जी की विचारधारा ’बहुजन हिताय, बहुजन सुखाय’ को आगे बढ़ाने के लिए मुझे गोरखपुर सदर (322) से ’आजाद समाज पार्टी (कांशीराम)’ का प्रत्याशी घोषित किया गया है। बहुत – बहुत आभार साधुवाद। पिछले 5 साल भी लड़ा हूँ। अब भी लड़ूंगा। जय भीम,जय मण्डल। बहुजन हिताय, बहुजन सुखाय।

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– Chandra Shekhar Aazad (@BhimArmyChief) 20 Jan 2022

Yogi Adityanath introduces himself as MLA. But his main rival will be the candidate of the Samajwadi party, not yet announced.

This will also be Chandrashekhar Azad’s first election.

The 34-year-old had backtracked after announcing in 2019 that he would face Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He later explained that since he had no party at the time, it was better to support Mayawati’s party and the Congress.

Now that he has one, he would face Yogi Adityanath, he had said.

“It is not important for me to win a place in the assembly of UP. It is important for me that Yogi Adityanath cannot be in the assembly. So I will contest wherever he competes”, had– he stated last year.

Army Chief Bhim and his party have no base in Gorakhpur or even in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The assembly seat of Gorakhpur Sadar has belonged to the BJP continuously since 1989 except once when it was won by Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha. In 2017, BJP’s Radha Mohan Das Agarwal won the seat by a margin of over 60,000 votes.

Chandrashekhar Azad recently said his party would not tie up with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi party after their seat-sharing talks broke down.

He said he felt cheated by the Samajwadi party and reneged on his promise to offer his party 25 seats to contest.

Akhilesh Yadav said he would try to secure two seats for Azad’s party, but was told army chief Bhim was no longer interested.

The Bhim army led by Chandrashekhar Azad attracted attention during the May 2017 clashes between Dalits and upper caste Thakurs in Saharanpur.

Chandrashekhar Azad was arrested after the clashes. Though he was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested him under the stringent National Security Act (NSA). He was released in September 2018 after 16 months in jail.

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