A day after the Nishad Party walked out of the SP-BSP-RLD ‘mahagathbandhan’ in Uttar Pradesh and its president Sanjay Nishad met Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav named Ram Bhual Nishad the party candidate from Gorakhpur on Saturday. The sitting SP MP, Praveen Nishad, has been denied the Gorakhpur ticket. His victory in the Lok Sabha bypoll in Gorakhpur in 2018 was a huge setback for Yogi Adityanath.

The Nishad Party president’s meeting with the UP chief minister in Lucknow on Friday fuelled speculation of the Nishad Party entering into an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. Praveen Nishad is Sanjay Nishad’s son.

The Nishad Party’s volte face and the possibility of aligning with the BJP have set the SP and BSP to redraw their strategy in eastern Uttar Pradesh (Purvanchal). Both BSP president Mayawati and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav have been holding separate meetings with their leaders to chalk out a new action plan.

Ram Bhual Nishad’s candidature from Gorakhpur is considered the first step in that direction. His nomination also indicated that the SP-BSP alliance was eyeing the dominant Nishad (boatmen community) vote bank to tilt the scales in their favour. A former minister when Mayawati was the chief minister, Ram Bhual Nishad first went over to the SP and then joined the BJP before the 2017 assembly elections.

With 28 seats, the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh is crucial in the electoral gameplan of the Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party. Polling in the 28 seats in Purvanchal will be held in the sixth and seventh phases of the Lok Sabha polls on May 12 and May 19, respectively. Elections in the politically important constituencies of Gorakhpur and Varanasi are scheduled to be held in the seventh and last phase on May 19.

Nishad Party, which has a substantial support base in the boatmen (mallah) community in Purvanchal, had become a constituent of the SP-BSP-RLD ‘mahagathbandhan’ earlier this week. But it parted company within a day. Sanjay Nishad blamed Akhilesh Yadav for sidelining the Nishad Party, and the failure to reach a consensus on naming the former as candidate from Maharajganj caused the split.

Akhilesh, however, refused to be cowed down and named Ram Bhual Nishad as candidate from Gorakhpur.

In a press release issued on Saturday, the Samajwadi Party president also named Ram Kumar as candidate from Kanpur. Ram Kumar also belongs to the Nishad community and is the son of former Unnao MP Manohar Lal.

Meanwhile, sources said some minor adjustments were likely to be made in the quota of seats allotted to the Samajwadi Party and the BSP.