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Hours after former Olympian boxer Vijender Singh joined the BJP, the Congress on Wednesday named party leader Mukesh Dhangar as its candidate for Mathura Lok Sabha seat.
Sources in the Congress said that the leadership was considering fielding Vijender against two-term sitting BJP MP Hema Malini in Mathura, which has a dominant Jat population.
Dhangar, an OBC, has been with Congress since his student days, and currently holds the post of general secretary in the state unit of the party.
Thursday is the last day for filing nominations in Mathura, which goes to the polls in the second phase on April 26.
In a surprise move, the Congress dropped the candidature of senior leader and former BSP minister Nakul Dubey from Sitapur, and replaced him with OBC leader Rakesh Rathore.
In 2022 Assembly polls, former BJP MLA Rathore was denied ticket after his purported telephone conversation in which he made remarks against the “upper caste” got leaked.
On replacing Dubey’s candidature, a senior Congress leader said: “Rathore, who comes from the Teli community has a strong say in the region. He is also the president of the Teli Samaj and will probably be the only candidate from the Teli community in the state for the Lok Sabha election. Therefore, his candidature would help the party in other constituencies as well in the future.”
Rathore will be facing BJP’s two-term MP Rakesh Verma, an OBC leader who had defeated Nakul Dubey, then a BSP candidate, by a margin of about 1 lakh votes in 2019.
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