In, out, in, SP’s final Moradabad candidate says: ‘No one can force leadership to give ticket’

Left in the end without a ticket, Hasan had told The Indian Express that he wouldn’t campaign for Veera — who is considered to be a confidant of senior jailed SP leader Azam Khan — even though Akhilesh had asked him to do so.

Hasan also labelled Veera an “outsider” and claimed that she got the ticket after SP president Akhilesh Yadav caved in to pressure from Azam Khan.

Veera says she is not affected by the controversy. “I would like to say that an election ticket can’t be forced on a party’s national leadership. Whatever happened is now in the past. I have been campaigning for the last few days, and I have seen that people from all communities have accepted me. I am confident of winning the election,” said Veera.

Asked about Hasan’s claim that she was given the SP ticket under pressure from Azam Khan, Veera says: “What is wrong in that? Azam Khan Sahab is a senior party leader. I can’t say anything else. I don’t know anything about the discussion between Akhilesh ji and Azam Sahab. All I know is that even Hasan ji got the ticket on Azam Khan’s insistence. It is the party’s top leadership that decides such things.”

On Hasan refusing to campaign for her, Veera says: “He should campaign for me because he is still in the party. I tried to reach out to him, but whoever picks up the phone doesn’t let me talk to him.”

Veera (62), a native of Bijnor district, had won a bypoll from the Bijnor Assembly seat in 2014, defeating the BJP’s Hemendra Pal by 11,000 votes.

Her father-in-law Kunwar Satya Veera is a three-time MLA from Bijnor. Her husband Udayan Veera has won a couple of urban local body elections and been the zilla parishad chairman of Bijnor. Udayan’s family is involved in the education sector, and runs several schools and colleges in Bijnor.

In 2015, she was removed from the SP over allegations of anti-party activities. Veera had again contested the seat on an SP ticket in the 2017 state polls, but lost to the BJP’s Suchi by 27,000 votes.

She was in the fray to contest the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat in 2019, but with the SP contesting in an alliance with the BSP, the seat went to the BSP. Angered over this, she joined the BSP, which gave her the ticket for Bareilly, which she lost to the BJP’s Dharmendra Kumar by 1.13 lakh votes.

Moradabad is one of the Lok Sabha seats in UP that have a Muslim majority. Among the Hindus, who are the minority, Thakurs are the largest group, followed by OBCs and Dalits.

Hasan won Moradabad in 2019 by defeating the BJP’s Kunwar Sarvesh Kumar Singh by 98,122 votes. Singh, who won Moradabad in 2014, defeating Hasan by 87,000 votes, has once again been nominated for the seat by the BJP. Singh has been a constant presence in the seat, having lost it in 2009 to ex-cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin of the Congress by nearly 50,000 votes.