Of the nine Assembly bypoll contests in Uttar Pradesh, the fight for Karhal in Mainpuri district is the most important for the Samajwadi Party (SP) as party president Akhilesh Yadav’s nephew Tej Pratap Yadav is the candidate from the constituency that Akhilesh used to represent till he moved to the Lok Sabha in June.

“A few villages of Saifai block fall under the Karhal Assembly seat, which we are sure of winning due to the dominance of Yadav voters. However, the party does not want to take a chance even though they have a personal connection with Karhal,” said a party leader in Karhal, which votes on November 20.

Of the 3.7 lakh voters in the constituency, Yadavs comprise about 1.4 lakh while Shakyas number around 60,000. Dalits and Muslims make up around 40,000 and 15,000 voters, while Brahmins and Thakurs number around 25,000 each.

The Karhal constituency is one of the five Assembly segments of the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat that is represented by Akhilesh’s wife Dimple, one of the most prominent women leaders of the SP. She has been camping in Mainpuri and has addressed public meetings, corner meetings, and door-to-door campaigns for Tej Pratap.

Last Thursday, she campaigned with Badaun MP and her brother-in-law Aditya Yadav, who is the son of SP national general secretary Shivpal Singh Yadav. On October 27, Dimple shared the stage with Shivpal and Azamgarh MP Dharmendra Yadav, Akhilesh’s cousin, at a public meeting in Ghiror village.

The Mainpuri MP also inaugurated Tej Pratap’s election office in Karhal on October 26 and presided over a meeting of booth committee members in the presence of Dharmendra, who held various events in support of the SP candidate on November 4, 5, and 6. Aditya has addressed multiple programmes in several villages in Karhal On October 26, he was the chief guest at a dangal (wrestling competition) in Taraulia panchayat.

Tej Pratap, a former MP from Mainpuri had represented the seat from 2014 to 2019 after winning the bypoll, necessitated by the resignation of Mulayam who retained the Azamgarh seat. He is the son-in-law of former Bihar CM and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Yadav and is married to one of his daughters, Raj Lakshmi Yadav. Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Tej Pratap was initially named as the party’s candidate from Kannauj and subsequently replaced by Akhilesh.

In a show of strength for Tej Pratap’s nomination on October 21, members of the SP’s “first family” — Akhilesh, SP principal general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Ramgopal Yadav, Dharmendra, Dimple, and Shivpal — were in attendance along with many party leaders.

Akhilesh got down to the party’s organisational work and set his sights on the other bypoll seats only after his nephew filed his nomination. He addressed programmes for the party’s Ghaziabad candidate Singh Raj Jatav and visited Karhal on October 25, when he addressed a huge gathering.

Shivpal has campaigned for the party’s candidates in Katehari and Sisamau along with Karhal, which adjoins the Yadav family’s ancestral village of Saifai.

Claiming that Akhilesh will begin his campaign for the remaining eight seats as well as in Jharkhand and Maharashtra from Sunday, SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said the party was confident that Tej Pratap would win. “The BJP is misusing the police and administration. Furthermore, it has tried to create confusion among the voters by Dharmendra’s brother-in-law Anujesh Pratap Singh,” he said.

Anujesh parted ways with the SP in 2017 and subsequently joined the BJP. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has fielded Avanish Kumar Shakya from the seat.