Trying to reach the dais to draw Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav’s attention, party workers clashed with each other during an election rally at Saraimeer in Azamgarh on Tuesday.

The workers broke the barricade and threw plastic chairs at each other despite Akhilesh repeatedly appealing to them to maintain peace so that he could address them.

The SP chief was in the area to campaign for his cousin Dharmendra Yadav contesting from Azamgarh and for Daroga Saroj fighting from Lalganj. The BJP has fielded Neelam Saroj in Lalganj. She had won the seat in 2014 but lost to BSP’s Sangeeta Azad in 2019.

Akhilesh had won from Azamgarh in 2019 but had to resign in 2022 to retain his Karhal Assembly seat in Mainpuri district. Dharmendra had contested the 2022 by-election from Azamgarh but lost out to Dinesh Lal Nirahua of the BJP.

“The followers of Akhilesh were over-enthusiastic and wanted him to see them. It is normal when a leader becomes popular or the former supporters of some other party start looking at another party’s leader with hope. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath had a rally here two days ago (Sunday) but the crowd at Akhilesh’s rally was bigger. The party workers eventually stopped fighting when Akhilesh started his speech,” said Mohammad Tariq, a local youth present at the rally.

Police were seen in purported video footage of the incident wielding batons to manage the crowd.

Similar chaos was witnessed at Phulpur in Allahabad on Sunday when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh were there to address an INDIA bloc rally. The crowd tried to jump over the barricades and brought the barriers down when the police tried to stop them. The situation was such that security personnel escorted Rahul and Akhilesh out of the venue and they left without addressing the rally.

The growing popularity of these leaders in the heartland state has forced many BJP candidates to behave strangely for votes.

Sangam Lal Gupta, who has been the BJP MP from Pratapgarh since 2019 but allegedly stayed away from people for the past five years, cried inconsolably on the dais on Tuesday, blaming the Kshatriyas for opposing him because he belonged to the Vaishya caste.

“This place is known for kings (Rajputs) and so they are opposing me because I am from the Teli caste,” he said during a speech, as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Locals alleged that Gupta hasn’t done any work for the constituency since 2019 and often misbehaved with people and his party workers. Gupta is in a straight contest with S.P. Singh Patel of the SP.

Earlier, BJP’s R.K. Patel in Banda and Rajveer Singh in Etah had apologised to the electorate during public meetings.