SP’s Kurmi leader upsets BJP's Niranjan Jyoti in UP's Fatehpur
In a closely contested fight, Patel emerged victorious by a margin of 33199 votes, and with that, the 68-year-old won his first parliamentary election
LUCKNOW Fatehpur was one seat on which the Samajwadi Party had made up its mind long ago to field its Kurmi candidate Naresh Uttam Patel against BJP’s sitting MP and union minister of state for rural development, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti who looked to win the seat for the third time in a row. But he upset her applecart.

In a closely contested fight, Patel emerged victorious by a margin of 33,199 votes, and with that, the 68-year-old won his first parliamentary election.
In February, the UP Vidhan Parishad elections were announced for 13 seats. The party decided not to resend Patel to the Upper House of the UP legislature and field him as the party’s candidate on the Fatehpur seat -- his hometown. Strategically, the party announced his name as its LS candidate in its penultimate list only a day before the last day of nomination for the seat.
Shortly before the elections, Patel had asked Akhilesh Yadav to relieve him from the post of the state president to focus on his fight in Fatehpur. The day before the third phase of elections, the SP named Shyam Lal Pal its state president. Fatehpur was to go to the polls a fortnight after in the fifth phase.
On his victory, Patel thanked the party president and INDIA bloc for his victory, saying he will work for “harmony among people, interest of farmers, youth and against price rise.”
Patel contested his first UP assembly polls in 1985 as Lok Dal candidate from Jahanabad assembly constituency in Fatehpur but lost. But in 1989, he was fielded as Janata Party candidate and won the seat. A close associate of SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav, Patel was a founder member of the party.
During the Yadav family feud between Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal, Patel sided with Akhilesh and when the latter became the national president of the SP in January 2017, the party named Patel its state president.
Patel also had been a minister in the first Mulayam Singh Yadav government between 1989 and 1991.
