The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has announced a change in its candidate for the Jaunpur constituency, with sitting MP Shyam Singh Yadav stepping in, according to party sources on Monday.
Yadav confirmed that he received a call from BSP chief Mayawati, urging him to contest the upcoming poll in Jaunpur.
The party had initially nominated Srikala Reddy, wife of former MP Dhananjay Singh, as its candidate.
This decision follows recent legal developments involving Singh, who, along with an associate, was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment on March 6 by the MP-MLA court in Jaunpur.
The case pertained to the 2020 kidnapping and extortion of Abhinav Singhal, a project manager for the Namami Gange initiative.
Singh, who had been lodged in Jaunpur district jail before being transferred to Bareilly jail, was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court on April 27, albeit with the imprisonment sentence upheld.
The political landscape in Jaunpur is further complicated by the candidature of former Maharashtra Minister Kripa Shankar Singh for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Babu Singh Kushwaha, a former BSP minister entangled in the NRHM scam, running for the Samajwadi Party (SP).
Yadav's previous victory in the 2019 polls, also on a BSP ticket, adds intrigue to the upcoming elections scheduled for May 25 in the sixth phase.
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