BSP fields new candidate in Jaunpur, replaced Shrikala Reddy

Talk about my wife returning the ticket is baseless, he added.Shyam Singh Yadav said he was called by BSP chief Mayawati and asked to contest from Jaunpur.An MP-MLA court in Jaunpur on March 6 sentenced Dhananjay Singh and his associate Santosh Vikram to seven years rigorous imprisonment in a 2020 case of kidnapping and extortion of a Namami Gange project manager.Allahabad High Court on April 27 granted bail to Singh but refused his plea to suspend or stay the sentence.The BJP has fielded former Maharashtra minister Kripa Shankar Singh in Jaunpur.

The BSP on Monday replaced its Jaunpur Lok Sabha seat candidate Shrikala Reddy with incumbent MP Shyam Singh Yadav.

Shrikala Reddy, the wife of former MP Dhananjay Singh, was announced as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate from Jaunpur on April 16.

Reacting to the move, Dhananjay Singh said that ''by doing this, my wife is feeling hurt''.

He also said the move was a conspiracy to humiliate him. ''Talk about my wife returning the ticket is baseless,'' he added.

Shyam Singh Yadav said he was called by BSP chief Mayawati and asked to contest from Jaunpur.

An MP-MLA court in Jaunpur on March 6 sentenced Dhananjay Singh and his associate Santosh Vikram to seven years' rigorous imprisonment in a 2020 case of kidnapping and extortion of a Namami Gange project manager.

Allahabad High Court on April 27 granted bail to Singh but refused his plea to suspend or stay the sentence.

The BJP has fielded former Maharashtra minister Kripa Shankar Singh in Jaunpur. Babu Singh Kushwaha, a former BSP leader and an accused in the Uttar Pradesh NRHM scam of 2012, is contesting from the seat on a Samajwadi Party ticket.

Shyam Singh Yadav won the 2019 elections from Jaunpur on a BSP ticket.

Speaking to reporters, Dhananjay Singh said, ''The BSP betrayed me for the fourth time. In 2012, 2014 and 2017, the party assured me of a ticket but cheated me at the last moment.'' ''I was already apprehensive that my wife's ticket would be cancelled. Since I was in jail, people in the BSP spoke to Mayawati about my wife and she was fielded from Jaunpur. I had no role in it,'' the former MP added. The Jaunpur constituency goes to the polls on May 25.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)