Lok Sabha Elections 2024 Phase 7: Voting for Ballia Lok Sabha seat of Uttar Pradesh will be held on June 1 in the 7th and final phase. Ballia Lok Sabha seat has been the political ground of socialist leader and former Prime Minister of India Chandrashekhar. Former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar had won the election from this seat 8 times. After winning the Lok Sabha elections 6 times in a row, this seat came to Chandrashekhar’s son Neeraj Shekhar on Samajwadi Party ticket. BJP, which was waiting for victory in Ballia for a long time, finally got the blessing of Vijayshree from here in 2014. Currently, BJP’s Virendra Singh Mast is the MP from here. BJP is trying its best to score a hattrick of victory from here, while Samajwadi Party is trying its best to get back its lost seat.
This time BJP has fielded Neeraj Shekhar from Ballia. Sanatan Pandey is in the fray from Samajwadi Party. A total of 13 candidates are contesting the elections here including Lallan Singh Yadav from BSP. Sanatan Pandey has come to the electoral battle for the second consecutive time on a bicycle to decide his political fate.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP’s Virendra Singh Mast defeated SP’s Sanatan Pandey by 15,519 votes. In the 2014 elections, the fort of Ballia also collapsed in front of the Modi wave and BJP’s Bharat Singh defeated SP’s Neeraj Shekhar by 1.39 lakh votes.
Neeraj Shekhar left SP and joined BJP
Ballia was occupied by Samajwadi leader Chandrashekhar for a long time. After his death, in the by-election held in 2007, his son Neeraj Shekhar contested from here on the Samajwadi Party ticket and won. Neeraj Shekhar was also elected MP in the 2009 elections. But in the 2014 elections, Neeraj Shekhar could not stand before the Modi wave and lost to Bharat Singh Mast. After losing the Lok Sabha elections, the Samajwadi Party sent Neeraj Shekhar to the Rajya Sabha. In the year 2019, Neeraj left the Samajwadi Party and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. On the same day, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the BJP and is currently a Rajya Sabha MP. This time the BJP has given him a ticket from the Ballia Lok Sabha seat.
Ballia Lok Sabha constituency, the land of rebels between the Saryu and Ganga rivers, has five assembly seats namely Ballia Nagar, Phephana, Bairia, Zahoorabad and Mohammadabad. Out of these, three are occupied by the Samajwadi Party, one by the BJP and one by the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party.
Dent among Brahmin and Yadav voters
Samajwadi Party has tried to make inroads into Brahmin voters by giving ticket to Sanatan Pandey from Ballia. On the other hand, BSP has tried to win over SP’s traditional Yadav voters by giving ticket to Lallan Yadav. Ballia seat has the highest number of Brahmin voters, around 3 lakh. After this come 2.5-2.5 lakh Yadavs, Rajputs and Dalits. There are also around one lakh Muslim voters.
Tags: Ballia News, Lok Sabha Elections, Uttar pradesh news
FIRST PUBLISHED : May 25, 2024, 17:25 IST