BJP may field late MP’s daughter in Kairana

New Delhi: The Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll in Uttar Pradesh expected to be held next month has become a tough task for the BJP even though the late BJP MP Hukum Singh’s daughter Mriganka Singh may be put up as the candidate to play the ‘sympathy’ card and consolidate Hindu votes.

“I will contest if the party desires. SP and BSP have tied up so there are new equations on this seat,” Singh told ET. She had last year unsuccessfully fought polls from the Kairana assembly seat, losing to SP’s Nahid Hasan.

The Muslim-Yadav consolidation on the assembly seat, which has majority Muslim population, had led to her loss on the seat held by her father for seven terms till he won the Kairana Lok Sabha seat in 2014. A Muslim candidate backed by SP-BSP and perhaps even by the RLD is expected to be floated to counter the BJP here, making it a “difficult scenario for us”, a local BJP leader said.


He, however, pointed out that BJP now holds four of the five assembly seats in Kairana, including Shamli and Thana Bhawan, represented by its firebrand MLAs like Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, who were named in the Muzzafarnagar riot cases. Rana and Som will be told to camp in their constituencies and join CM Yogi Adityanath to consolidate Hindu votes.

“Also, the legacy of the late MP Hukum Singh and sympathy could work in our favour if his daughter is given the ticket,” the local BJP leader said.

Tabassum Begum, a former BSP MP from Kairana and mother of Kairana MLA Nahid Hassan, may be fielded as the SP-BSP candidatein the bypoll.