Haridwar candidate ‘found supporting BJP’, BSP changes nominee

ROORKEE: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) announced Maulana Jamil Ahmad Qasmi as its candidate for the Lok Sabha seat of Haridwar on Tuesday, replacing Bhawana Pandey just three days after announcing her candidacy for allegedly extending support for the ruling BJP.

BSP had announced Bhawana Pandey as its candidate from Haridwar on Friday. However, the party has now nominated Maulana Jamil Ahmad Qasmi, a resident of Muzaffarnagar, who had previously served as a BSP legislator from the Meerapur seat in his native district during 2012-17 in Uttar Pradesh. He later switched to the Congress in 2019.

In the 2022 general assembly elections, he contested from the same seat on the Congress ticket but secured fifth place, with over one thousand votes.

BSP officials said that Pandey was replaced after it was discovered that she had been covertly supporting the saffron party internally, leading to her expulsion.

The 63-year-old Qasmi, from Tandera village under Jansath tehsil, is a graduate of the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband.

"Qasmi ji will file his nomination on the BSP ticket on Wednesday," BSP state president Shish Pal Singh told TOI. When asked about the sudden change, Singh said it was a necessary correction of their previous decision. "We repeatedly tried to contact her (Pandey) since Friday to file her nomination at the earliest, but she remained unresponsive and has locked herself in her house in Delhi. It appears she had a hidden agenda to let the nomination filing period expire, preventing our party from fielding a candidate from Haridwar. In reality, she was acting as an undercover agent for the BJP," Singh added.

Meanwhile, Pandey, known for her controversial background due to two arrests by the CBI in 2001 and 2017 for alleged financial corruption, has allegedly been conducting door-to-door campaigning for over a year as an independent candidate in Haridwar.

The 54-year-old Pandey expressed her support for BJP candidate, Trivendra Singh Rawat. She said, "Rawat ji is like an elder brother to me. Hence, I will be actively supporting him in the election," adding that it was her goal to prevent Umesh Kumar, an independent legislator from the local Khanpur constituency, from becoming an MP from Haridwar LS seat this time.