Officers who quit ED, IPS to join BJP leading in UP Assembly polls

BJP candidates Asim Arun, who had quit the Indian Police Service, and Rajeshwar Singh, who resigned from the Enforcement Directorate, to fight the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, were leading from their respective seats on Thursday, according to poll trends.

Arun was leading from the Kannauj seat with over 1.20 lakh votes and closely trailed by Samajwadi Party's Anil Doharey, who polled 1.14 lakh votes till 4 pm, the Election Commission website showed.

Singh was leading from Sarojini Nagar seat in Lucknow with 52,199 votes to his name, while his nearest rival SP's Abhishek Mishra got 34,767 votes till 4 pm.

The final results for the elections were yet to be announced.

Both of them had taken voluntary retirement from service to join the BJP and contest the assembly polls.

Asim Arun, a 1994-batch IPS officer, was an additional director general-rank officer serving as the Kanpur Police Commissioner when he sought VRS on January 8.

The 51-year-old Arun had previously helmed the state's Anti-Terrorist Squad, the 112 service besides leading the police force in districts like Aligarh, Gorakhpur and Agra.

While on central deputation, he had served in the core protection team of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Special Protection Group (SPG) and had earlier got trained in policing in Europe's Kosovo in 2002-03.

Rajeshwar Singh had started his career as a Provincial Police Services (PPS) officer (1996 batch) in Uttar Pradesh. He had joined the force after completing his B.Tech from IIT-Dhanbad and had been posted as a circle officer in many parts of Lucknow.

A PhD in police, human rights and social justice, Singh joined the Enforcement Directorate, a central investigating agency that probes cases of money laundering and foreign exchange violation crimes, on deputation in 2007.