Prestige battle for BJP in Gorakhpur.
Gorakhpur is one of the most high-profile Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and is considered a BJP bastion. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Mahant of Gorakhnath Math, won from here five consecutive elections and represented it in Lok Sabha from 1998 to 2017. Before him, his spiritual guru and the then chief of the Math, Mahant Avedyanath won three elections - once as a Hindu Mahasabha candidate and twice as BJP candidate.
Yogi Adityanath resigned as Gorakhpur MP in 2017 after he was elected the state's Chief Minister.
The bypoll held after his resignation was dubbed as an experiment by Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party with the parties jointly fielding Praveen Nishad from the seat. The election results in this eastern UP constituency had given a huge shock to the BJP while it gave a boost to SP-BSP alliance. Praveen Nishad is the son of Dr Sanjay Nishad, founder of the Nishad (Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal) Party, and comes from Nishad community which has a substantial population in the region.
Just before the Lok Sabha election, Sanjay Nishad met SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and announced an alliance between his party and the Mahagathbandhan which also comprises BSP and RLD. However, a day later he met UP CM Yogi Adityanath and later announced that his son was joining the BJP. He claimed that seat-sharing talks between the SP and the Nishad Party broke, prompting him to take the decision.
Soon after, Praveen Nishad was declared the BJP candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar while Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan has been nominated form Gorakhpur.
The seat is again in the limelight as the electoral battle for the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha, draws to a close. While the anti-BJP alliance would like to retain its grip over the seat, the saffron party is looking to wrest it from the opposition
There are 10 candidates are contesting in Gorakhpur, which has 19.54 lakh voters. However, the fight is mainly among Madhusudan Tripathi of the Congress, Ravindra Shyamnarayan Shukla alias Ravi Kishan of the BJP and Rambhual Nishad of the SP.
Ravi Kishan, a popular Bhojpuri actor who also works in Bollyoowd, had contested the 2014 election on a Congress ticket from Jaunpur. The actor joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in February 2017.
In the 2014 election, Adityanath had won against SP's Rajmati Nishad with a margin of 3.12 lakh votes. Except in 2009 when the Samajwadi Party fielded Manoj Tiwari (now in BJP), the party has fielded Nishad candidate since 1998.
The parliamentary constituency comprises five assembly segments: Caimpiyarganj, Pipraich, Gorakhpur Urban, Gorakhpur Rural and Sahajanwa.
In the last parliamentary elections in 2014, the BJP had won 71 seats in the state, securing 42.63 per cent of the votes. BJP ally Apna Dal bagged two more. The Samajwadi Party had won five seats with a vote share of 22.35 per cent. The BSP did not win any seat but secured 19.77 per cent votes. The Congress registered wins on two UP seats in 2014, bagging 7.53 per cent of the votes.
UP is facing a triangular battle between the BJP, the Congress and BSP-SP-RLD alliance. Under the alliance's seat-sharing formula, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is contesting on 38 Lok Sabha seats of the total 80 seats, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party on 37 seats and the Chaudhary Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on three seats. The alliance has left two for Congress' Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi).
In the seventh phase of Lok Sabha polling, 13 seats in Uttar Pradesh - Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushi Nagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj - are going for polls.
In 2014 election, all of these 13 seats were won by the BJP with Prime Minister Narendra Modi securing his victory from Varanasi.
The counting of votes of the Lok Sabha election 2019 will be conducted on May 23.
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