The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named former Enforcement Directorate Joint Director Rajeshwar Singh as one of its candidates for the for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, a day after he voluntarily retired from his service.

Singh has been named the BJP candidate for the Sarojini Nagar Assembly constituency which falls within the state’s capital city of Lucknow.

On Monday, the former joint director of the Enforcement Directorate had said in a Twitter post that the Union government has accepted his request for voluntary retirement from the service. Singh had joined the Enforcement Directorate in 2007.

Advertisement

He has served in the Uttar Pradesh Police for 10 years and nearly 14 years in the Enforcement Directorate, according to The Hindu.

“I was constantly feeling a greater sense of service to the public at large and a complete dedication to the nation at heart, the right medium for propelling which, I believe, is politics,” Singh said in a statement on Monday.

In an interview after being named a candidate in the Uttar Pradesh elections, Singh told ANI that he would take the BJP’s ideology forward.

“[Bharatiya Janata] Party’s ideology is country’s future,” he said. “Yogi [Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath] ji is doing great work against ‘mafias’, we need to support them.” The former central agency officer added that there was a need to control “growing communalism”.

Advertisement

In a tweet on Tuesday, Singh thanked BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Adityanath.

“I pray to [Hindu deity] Shri Ram that I could carry out my new responsibilities with dedication,” he wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the BJP did not give a ticket to Aparna Yadav, who is married to Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger son Prateek Yadav. She had joined the BJP on January 19.

The BJP has also denied ticket to the son of party MP Rita Bahuguna Joshi, state Assembly Speaker Hriday Narayan Dixit, minister Swati Singh and two sitting MLAs Avinash Trivedi and Suresh Chandra Tiwari, reported The Indian Express.