ONE OF the significant seats in Uttar Pradesh is Nagina, which is also the only reserved seat in the state set to vote in the first phase. Nagina has a dominant population of scheduled castes as well as Muslims. In 2019, the seat was won by BSP candidate Girish Chandra who defeated Yashwant Singh of the BJP by a margin of nearly 67,000 votes, but the entry of Bhim Army chief and Azad Samaj Party leader Chandrashekhar Aazad has changed the equations on this seat now as he is banking on his popularity among Dalit voters, especially youngsters.
The Muslim voters on this seat are said to be over 50 per cent and the Ansari community, which is considered backward, comprises a significant chunk.
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The BJP has named sitting MLA from Nihtaur Assembly seat, Om Kumar, here, who is hoping to capitalise on being a local. The Samajwadi Party has picked retired additional district judge Manoj Kumar for this seat. The BSP decided to replace its sitting MP Girish Chand on this seat with Surendra Pal Singh. Singh contested 2022 Assembly polls as BSP candidate from Purkazi Assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar but lost to the RLD’s Anil Kumar.
Another seat that will in vote the first phase is Saharanpur, from where Imran Masood of Congress has filed his nomination papers, alongside sitting BJP MP Raghav Lakhan Pal. While there is no SP candidate on this seat, as it is the only seat in the first phase, which has been given to the Congress as part of the INDIA alliance, Mazid Ali is in the fray for the BSP.
In Saharanpur, the BSP’s Haji Fazrul Rehman defeated Raghav Lakhan Pal of the BJP by around 20,000 votes in 2019. Imran Masood of the Congress, who contested in 2019, secured around 1 lakh votes.
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In Muzaffarnagar, which is also going for polls in this phase, BJP has repeated its sitting MP Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, while Samajwadi Party is banking on four time MLA and former Rajya Sabha MP harendra Mallik. BSP has fielded Dara Singh on this seat, who is a “Prajapati” by caste.
BJP’s Jitin Prasada files papers from Pilibhit. PTI 
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