Devendra Agrawal is the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal candidate from the Mathura Vidhan Sabha constituency for the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, starting February 10. In the 2017 Assembly elections, he contested from the Sadabad seat and came third after Anil Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and Pritee Chaudhary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has been an MLA for one term. In the 2012 Assembly elections, Agrawal defeated Satendra Sharma of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) by a margin of 5,187 votes.

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Agrawal was born on January 1, 1965, in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh. He finished school from Gandhi Inter College, Mathura. He is married to Latarani Agrawal and the couple have two sons.

In his election affidavit, Agrawal has declared four criminal cases against himself and mentioned “Agriculture & Business” as his profession. The former MLA has declared assets of over Rs 29 crore and liabilities of more than Rs 1 crore. Agrawal owns immovable assets worth Rs 17.42 crore and movable assets of Rs 5.67 crore. His wife Latarani has declared immovable assets worth Rs 5.92 crore and movable assets of Rs 30 lakh.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded Shrikant Sharma and Pradeep Sharma is the Indian National Congress candidate from Mathura. The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party has given ticket to Jagjit Chaudhary replacing SK Sharma.

The BJP’s Shrikant Sharma is the current MLA from the Mathura constituency. Shrikant Sharma secured 1,43,361 votes against Congress’s Pradeep Mathur who bagged 42,200.

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The first phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections will cover the Jat-dominated belt of western UP from where farmers had participated actively in protests against the Centre’s three farm laws.

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As many as 623 candidates are contesting in the first phase and around 2.27 crore people are eligible to vote in this phase.