The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Sunday said it would field its former MLA Guddu Jamali alias Shah Alam in the Lok Sabha bypoll for Azamgarh.
Mr Jamali, a BSP MLA between 2017 and 2022, also held the position of its legislature party leader in the last Uttar Pradesh assembly but was sacked shortly before polls.
He had subsequently contested the just-concluded state assembly polls as an AIMIM candidate from the Mubarakpur seat within the Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency but had lost to the Samajwadi Party candidate.
Mr Jamali, however, joined the BSP again recently.
The Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat fell vacant on March 22 after the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav quit it to retain the Karhal assembly seat which he won in the recent polls.
The date for the Lok Sabha bypoll is yet to be announced by the Election Commission.
BSP supremo Mayawati made the announcement about Mr Jamali's candidature after a party meeting in Lucknow she chaired to review the BSP's recent poll performance in the state.
In a statement, Mayawati also said the party has decided to retain its state president Bhim Rajbhar and has appointed three state coordinators -- former Meerut MP Munkad Ali, former Azamgarh MLC Vijay Pratap and Rajkumar Gautam of Bulandshahr.
The state coordinators will visit all 18 divisions in the state to examine the party's influence in those regions and apprise Mayawati of their feedback, the statement said.
The BSP chief said her objective is to strengthen the party and for this, she has made Akash Anand, her nephew, the party's national coordinator.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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