Aradhana Mishra, Virendra Chaudhary only Congress winners in UP amid rout

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In the run-up to the current polls, Congress general secretary in charge of UP, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, had taken the initiative to give 40 per cent of party tickets to women candidates, fielding 159 women candidates out of the total 403 party nominees in the state.

The 47-year-old Congress Legislature Party leader in the outgoing Assembly, Aradhana Mishra, had accompanied Priyanka across the state on her women-centred campaign, called “Larki hun, lar sakti hun (I am a girl, and I can fight”.

Aradhana is the daughter of veteran UP Congress leader Pramod Tiwari, who had made a record of sorts by winning Rampur Khas constituency 9 times from 1980 to 2012. In 2014, when he became the MP, Aradhana won this seat in a bypoll.

In the 2017 polls, she won the seat for the second consecutive time, defeating the BJP’s Nagesh Pratap Singh by nearly 17,000 votes. The Congress then made her its Legislature Party leader in the state Assembly.

Before contesting the Assembly election, Aradhana, who completed her Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and Master’s in Business Administration, served as a block pramukh for three terms since 2001.

Considered to be close to Priyanka, Aradhana had accompanied her during her visits to the houses of women and other victims of various atrocities in several districts – including Hathras, Unnao, Umbha, Sidharthanagar and Lakhimpur Kheri – in recent years.

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Virendra Chaudhary is a senior UP Congress leader, who has been contesting from the Pharendra Assembly constituency since 2012. In the 2017 polls, he was defeated by BJP candidate Bajarang Bahadur Singh by a slender margin. This time too, they had been locked in a neck-and-neck fight through the counting, with Virendra appearing on course to clinch the seat.