A day after the Nishad Party quit the SP-BSP-RLD alliance in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party Saturday named its own candidate for the prestigious Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat, dropping sitting MP Pravin Nishad.
Ram Bhuwal Nishad, the SP candidate from Gorakhpur, the seat once held by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, is also from the Nishad community.
The Nishad party is headed by Sanjay Nishad, father of Pravin Nishad who had won the Gorakhpur parliamentary seat on an SP ticket in the 2018 bypolls. Gorakhpur was considered a bastion of Adityanath, who had represented the parliamentary constituency several times before.
Apart from Ram Bhuwal Nishad, the SP announced its candidate for Kanpur, Ram Kumar, who is also from the Nishad community and the brother of former Unnao MP Deepak Kumar. It changed its Moradabad candidate, Nasir Qureshi, replacing him with S T Hasan.
It was only four days ago on Tuesday that the Nishad Party had joined the alliance and it was believed that Pravin Nishad would be fielded from the seat once again.
The party, however, sprang a surprise by leaving the anti-BJP alliance.
"There was conflict between the two parties on Maharajganj seat as the Nishad Party wanted to contest with its own party symbol, whereas the Samajwadi Party was not ready for it," a Nishad Party leader had said.