BJP announces candidature of Dara Singh Chauhan for Ghosi bypoll

LUCKNOW: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday announced the candidature of Dara Singh Chauhan for the Ghosi assembly seat bypoll, a month after he quit the Samajwadi Party (SP) and resigned from the UP assembly to return to the saffron fold.

The bypolls for the east UP seat will be held on September 5 and results would be declared on September 8.
Chauhan, an OBC, had defected from SP to join the BJP on July 17 after meeting party’s chief strategist and home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi.

If elected, he may be well in the race for a ministerial berth in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, it is learnt.
A minister for forest, environment and animal husbandry, in the previous BJP government, Chauhan had turned rebel to join the SP just before the 2022 assembly elections.
Akhilesh fielded him from the Ghosi assembly seat which he won by defeating BJP’s Vijay Rajbhar by a margin of around 22,000 votes.
Chauhan started his political career with the BSP and later joined the SP.
He represented BSP in Rajya Sabha between 1996 and 2000 and SP between 2000 and 2006.
He returned to BSP and got elected to Lok Sabha from Ghosi parliamentary seat in 2009.
After losing to BJP’s Harinarayan Rajbhar from Ghosi in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Chauhan defected to BJP in 2015.
He then managed to get elected from the Madhuban assembly seat in 2017.