By-elections are underway for nine Uttar Pradesh assembly seats. In this by-election, which has become a cause of concern for both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP), there is one seat where voters have trusted the outside candidate instead of the premises. . This headquarters is the Marapur assembly headquarters of Muzaffarnagar district. For the last five decades, no local leader has been able to make it to the assembly by winning elections from the Meerapur assembly seat.
The name changed to Bhokarhedi, Morna and then Meerapur.
Talking about the past of Meerapur Assembly seat, this seat used to be reserved earlier and then its name was Bhokarhedi Assembly. Later this headquarters became general and the name was changed to Morna. With effect from the 2012 assembly elections, the name of this seat was renamed Meerapur. The name of this assembly venue changed twice, from safe to normal, and along with it many strange coincidences also happened. The people of this area worked to send three generations of the same family to the assembly.
Three generations of the family represented
The assembly seat of Meerapur was represented in the assembly by three generations of the same family. UP’s first deputy CM Babu Narayan Singh was the MLA from this seat. Babu Narayan Singh’s son and grandson also represented this Assembly seat and coincidentally, both of them also made it to Parliament again. Babu Narayan Singh’s son Sanjay Chauhan was elected MLA from Morna (now Mirapur) assembly seat in 1996 on the SP ticket.
Sanjay Chauhan’s son Chandan Chauhan was elected MLA of the SP-led alliance in the 2022 UP elections on the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) ticket. Sanjay Chauhan had also been an MP and now this seat has fallen vacant as Chandan Chauhan was also elected as a Member of Parliament. Both the father and son won the Lok Sabha elections from the Bijnor seat.
No local has won MLA in 59 years
Since 1985, a total of 11 MLAs have been elected from the Meerapur assembly seat, which has been a laboratory for political parties, but no local leader has been able to win the legislature. Along with Muzaffarnagar district, leaders of other districts also contested elections from this seat and after winning it they also reached the Assembly, but in these years the public did not send any local to Lucknow. Maulana Jamil, who won this seat on the Bahujan Samaj Party ticket in the 2012 assembly elections, lives in Tandedha village of Meerapur assembly constituency but is also originally a resident of Deoband village in Zaheerpur .
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In the 2017 UP elections, the BJP had given ticket to Avtar Bhadana. Meerapur assembly constituency aside, Avtaar was not even a resident of Muzaffarnagar district. However, the BJP has fielded a new candidate in 2022. This time RLD’s Mithilesh Pal is the candidate of the BJP-led NDA. Against Mithilesh, the SP has named Sumbul Rana, daughter-in-law of former MP Kadir Rana, its candidate.
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Kadir Rana has also been an MLA from this seat. Qadir was elected MLA from Morna (now Mirapur) assembly seat in 2007 on the Lok Dal symbol. This time also in the by-elections both the SP and the RLD presented external candidates according to the trend. The Azad Samaj Party, led by lawyer Chandrashekhar, has gone for local faces like Zahid Hussain and the Bahujan Samaj Party like Shahnazar. This time it remains to be seen whether this trend will break or continue.
These leaders have been MLAs from 1985 till now.
If we talk about the elections held from 1985 till now, Saidujjama of Congress was elected MLA from this seat in the year 1985. Amir Alam of Janata Dal in 1989, Rampal Saini of BJP in 1991 and 1993, Sanjay Singh of SP in 1996, Rajpal Saini of BSP in 2002, Qadir Rana of Lok Dal in 2007, Mithlesh Pal of Lok Dal in 2009, BSP in 2012 Maulana Jameel, Avtar Singh Bhadana of BJP in 2017 and Chandan Singh Chauhan of Lok Dal in 2022 have been MLAs.
