Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat: BJP's Sanjeev Balyan to battle it out with SP's Harendra Singh Malik

Muzaffarnagar, one of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, will witness a contest between Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Sanjeev Balyan and Harendra Singh Malik of Samajwadi party (SP) in the first phase of the general elections set to be held on April 19. The date of counting and announcement of results is June 4.

Muzaffarnagar, one of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, will witness a contest between Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Sanjeev Balyan and Harendra Singh Malik of Samajwadi party (SP) in the first phase of the general elections set to be held on April 19. The date of counting and announcement of results is June 4. This Lok Sabha constituency has a total of five Vidhan Sabha seats under it, i.e., Budhana, Charthawal, Muzaffarnagar, Khatauli, and Sardhana.

Notably, the BJP managed to win 49.7 per cent of the vote share in the Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, whereas, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RLD) touched a relatively close mark of 49.1 per cent vote share. BJP's Sanjeev Kumar Balyan emerged victorious after receiving 6,53,391 and 5,73,780 votes in 2014 and 2019, respectively. He defeated Bahujan Samaj Party's (BSP) Kadir Rana in 2014, who got 2,52,241 votes, and RLD's Chaudhary Ajit Singh in 2019, who received 5,67,254 votes.

However, Congress had a stronghold over Muzaffarnagar till 1990 but afterwards, BJP managed to emerge victorious in five out of eight Lok Sabha elections. Sanjeev Balyan's political career started in 2014 when he won from the Muzaffarnagar seat and entered the lower house of the Indian parliament.

Hoping to defeat BJP's Sanjeev Balyan from securing a hattrick this time, the Samajwadi Party has fielded one of the most seasoned politicians Harendra Singh Malik from Muzaffarnagar. Malik is a crucial name when it comes to the political landscape of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

His political career started in 1985 when he was elected on a Lok Dal ticket to be the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Khatauli seat. Later in 1989 he joined Janata Dal and secured a seat in Baghra. He remained an MLA for seven years. Later, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, representing Haryana in 2002. Notably, the Lok Sabha election 2024 in Uttar Pradesh will be held in seven phases from April 19 to June 1. Votes polled in the seven phases of the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha election 2024 will be counted on June 4.

In the 2019 elections, turning the arithmetic of the SP-BSP 'Mahagatbandhan' in Uttar Pradesh upside down, the BJP and its ally Apna Dal (S) won 64 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. The partners in the alliance, Akhilesh Yadav's SP and Mayawati's BSP could only muster 15 seats. The election for 543 Lok Sabha seats will be held in seven phases starting April 19. (ANI)

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