India, March 7 -- LUCKNOW BJP's local OBC leader Pramod Yadav, 55, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants in full public view in Bodhapur village of Jaunpur on Thursday, a day after former MP Dhananjay Singh, who was planning to contest the Lok Sabha polls from this district, and an aide were sentenced to seven years' rigorous imprisonment by the MP/MLA court in a 2020 kidnapping case of a senior U.P. Jal Nigam official, said police.

The conviction dealt to a major blow to Singh's plan to contest polls from Jaunpur seat and is set to influence the politics of this caste-riddled constituency where the BJP has fielded Maharashtra's former junior home minister Kripa Shankar Singh as its candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Locals ...