Nirahua

Nirahua had contested the Lok Sabha election from Azamgarh in 2019 as a BJP nominee but had lost against SP president Akhilesh Yadav. The By-elections for the Rampur and Azamgarh seats got necessitated after resignations of Azam Khan and SP President Akhilesh Yadav, respectively. Both had resigned from their Lok Sabha membership after winning the Assembly polls.

Nirahua, who breached the SP citadel in Azamgarh by defeating its candidate Dharmendra Yadav, Akhilesh’s cousin, by over 8,000 votes remained in the spotlight during the poll campaign for being a famous Bhojpuri actor-singer and for his proximity with both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Sources in the BJP said that Adityanath has always been accessible to Nirahua, who had raised various development issues related to Azamgarh before him over the last several years. Local people have known that he was close to Adityanath and could get development works done in the area and “hence they put their trust on him,” sources said.

Although Nirahua, who belongs to the OBC community, faced the challenge of being an “outsider” in Azamgarh since he hails from Ghazipur, Adityanath, in his public meeting last week during his campaign for Nirahua, had cited the example of the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat that he had vacated in 2017 after becoming the CM, saying in the 2019 elections he fielded Ravi Kishan, a Bhojpuri actor from Jaunpur, from the seat as he wanted a youth from Purvanchal to contest from there. Ravi Kishan won the election. Adityanath thus sought to assure the gathering that if Nirahua would win the election, he will stay in Azamgarh and work for its development.

However, Nirahua lost the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Azamgarh against SP's Dharmendra Yadav, ending his two years tenure in the lower house of the Indian Parliament.