For UP bypoll to avenge Ayodhya loss, BJP fields own Pasi to counter SP’s: Who is Chandrabhan Paswan?

The name of 50-year-old Chandrabhan, a BJP district functionary, was among the three that the district unit had suggested to the party leadership for consideration along with former MLAs Baba Gorakhnath and Ramu Priyadarshi.

Chandrabhan, a practising lawyer, is from a family of businessmen and hails from the village of Parsauli in Ayodhya. According to BJP’s district chief Kamlesh Srivastava, he had also sought a ticket to contest from Milkipur in the 2022 Assembly elections.

“This will be the first election that Chandrabhan, a long-time party worker, will be contesting. His wife Kanchan is also running for a second term as a Zila Panchayat member from Rudauli,” said Srivastava.

Like Awadhesh, whose son Ajit Prasad is the SP candidate, Paswan is from the Dalit Pasi community and their vote is likely to determine the outcome. The current caste dynamics suggest that both parties will likely have to rely more on upper-caste voters than on Dalits and Other Backward Classes.

“The two parties have chosen their candidates from the Pasi community because of its significant vote share in the constituency,” said Paras Nath Yadav, SP’s Ayodhya district president.

Pasis are the second-largest Dalit group in the state after Jatavs. The community was earlier largely seen as a supporter of the BSP but as the Mayawati-led party’s base increasingly shrunk and became confined to Jatavs, the community shifted its allegiance to the BJP prompted by the BJP’s aggressive outreach to SCs.

However, since the Faizabad loss, the BJP has attempted to reach out to Pasis and send them signals by publicly invoking its icons such as Lakhan Pasi.

The Milkipur bypoll was supposed to be held along with the other bypolls last November but got delayed over a petition that its former MLA Baba Gorakhnath had filed in 2022 over alleged irregularities in the 2022 Assembly elections.

The importance the BJP is placing on the bypoll is illustrated by how Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has taken charge of the party campaign.

The CM has made several visits to Ayodhya in recent months. On January 11, he performed the “abhishek” of Lord Ram at the Ayodhya temple ahead of the first anniversary of the temple’s consecration. About a week earlier, during another visit to Ayodhya, he met with booth-level workers from Milkipur, setting the campaign agenda. He is learnt to have told the workers that if the BJP can win Kundarki in the November bypolls, it can also bag Milkipur.

There are almost 1.2 lakh voters from the Scheduled Castes in Milkipur, including 70,000 Pasi voters, while the remainder are Jatavs and from other communities. The Brahmin population in the seat is also significant, with their numbers comparable to that of Yadavs, who are estimated to number around 60,000. Thakurs and Muslims have an equal presence in the constituency, with around 32,000 voters each. There are around 3.7 lakh voters in total in Milkipur.