There are 10 candidates in the fray in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur Lok Sabha constituency but none is as familiar as Afzal Ansari.

Afzal, seeking re-election from the constituency, comes from a family known for good and bad reasons. His younger brother Mukhtar Ansari, a mafia don who had over 60 criminal cases against him, died under mysterious circumstances in Banda jail on March 28. Their grandfather Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari was a surgeon and was elected president of the Muslim League in 1918 and 1920 and president of the Congress in 1927.

Although Afzal was elected MP from Ghazipur in 2019 as a BSP member, he is contesting this time on a Samajwadi Party (an INDIA ally) ticket.

The locals say that Parasnath Rai of the BJP and Umesh Singh of the BSP are unfamiliar faces because their public interaction is negligible.

“Afzal is contesting on his own because his identity is strong here. The caste and religious equations also suit him. Parasnath and Umesh don’t have any public interaction. However, Manoj Sinha, lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, is camping here and going from locality to locality seeking votes for Parasnath. Umesh is unknown here and is likely to get only the Dalit votes of Mayawati (the BSP chief),” said a local journalist on the condition of anonymity.

The majority of voters with whom this correspondent interacted were determined to defeat the BJP candidate because of “the lies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

“He only lies and never keeps his promises,” said a youth, refusing to divulge his identity. He listed Modi’s promises of achchhe din, job generation and doubling farmers’ income that never came true.

Afzal focuses more on the national leaders of the BJP than local issues. Questioning the education qualifications of Modi and some other BJP leaders, Afzal said in a public meeting here on Wednesday: “A learned person like Modi and a scholar like Amit Shah (home minister) are there. Don’t we need to talk about the authenticity of their educational certificates?”

“Then there are Smriti Irani (women and child development minister) and Jay Shah (son of Amit Shah and BCCI secretary),” he added.

The Opposition had often alleged that the degrees of these leaders were not genuine.

Afzal claimed that there was anger among people against the Yogi Adityanath government following the “mysterious death of my younger brother Mukhtar Ansari”.

“The people have sympathy for someone whom they (Adityanath) called a mafia. If you (the state government) think that his death is your achievement, then wait for the results of the parliamentary election on June 4,” he said.

Ghazipur votes on June 1