Uttar Pradesh: After Mukhtar Ansari, rival Brijesh Singh quits race for Vidhan Bhawan

VARANASI: If jailed mafia don Mukhtar Ansari’s name will be missing from the list of MLAs in the Vidhan Sabha as he didn’t contest the assembly polls, the name of his arch rival and another jailed mafia don Brijesh Singh will also not be seen among the MLCs in the legislative council.
On the last day of withdrawal of nominations, Brijesh’s papers were withdrawn leaving his wife and former MLC Annapurna Singh in a fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Sudama Patel and Samajwadi Party’s Umesh Kumar in the MLC (local bodies) election from Varanasi seat.
District election officer Kaushal Raj Sharma said, “The process of nomination withdrawal concluded on Thursday afternoon when the papers of one Independent candidate Arun Kumar alias Brijesh Singh were withdrawn. Now, three candidates, including Independent Annapurna Singh, BJP’s Sudama Patel and SP’s Umesh Kumar are left in the fray. The polling will take place on April 9 followed by counting on April 12.”
With the withdrawal of nomination by Brijesh, the contest for MLC (local bodies) on Varanasi seat has become triangular as the family of the mafia don has been maintaining monopoly on this seat since 1998. Annapurna Singh had won the seat in 2010 on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket, although later she was expelled from the party on the charges of indulgence in anti-party activities.
Earlier, Brijesh’s brother late Udaynath Singh alias Chulbul Singh had won this seat in 1998 and 2004 on BJP ticket. Chulbul Singh’s son Sushil Singh has retained Saiyyedraja assembly seat on BJP ticket.
In 2016, BJP had avoided fielding any candidate against Brijesh, who defeated SP’s Meena Singh. But, this time BJP has fielded its own candidate for Varanasi seat and the party’s Kashi region unit president Mahesh Chand Srivastava has already made it clear that owing to the majority in all local bodies of the three districts — Varanasi, Chandauli and Bhadohi — of this constituency, his party is sure of a victory.
It is a coincidence that Brijesh has also quit the race for Vidhan Bhawan like his arch rival Mukhtar, who fielded his son Abbas Ansari from Mau Sadar assembly seat which he (Mukhtar) had won from 1996 to 2017 assembly elections. The monopoly of Mukhtar’s family on Mau Sadar seat continued even in the currently concluded assembly poll process when Abbas defeated the BJP candidate.