-Rajesh Mishra
Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came on the back foot due to the sudden resignations of MLAs and ministers just before the UP Assembly elections, has given tickets again to most of its sitting MLAs, contrary to expectations. BJP has released the first list for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. In this list the names of the candidates have been announced for Phase I and II. Contrary to earlier claims of 30-40 per cent of the MLAs, the party has booked tickets of only 20 people and five of them have already left the party, while two have crossed the age of 75. In this way, the party has cut tickets of barely less than 20 per cent of the sitting MLAs.
According to the list, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will contest from Gorakhpur city seat, while Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya will contest from Sirathu seat. BJP has announced candidates for 57 out of 58 seats in the first phase and 48 out of 55 seats in the second phase. Earlier it was discussed that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath can be contested from Ayodhya to give edge to the Hindutva wave, but in the end, Gorakhpur seat was announced for him, avoiding any kind of experiment.
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The party fielded 21 new candidates
BJP’s election in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Dharmendra Pradhan, party general secretary Arun Singh announced the names of the candidates at the party’s national headquarters in Delhi. National General Secretary Arun Singh said that Pankaj Singh from Noida, Dhirendra Singh from Jewar, Shrikant Sharma from Mathura, Atul Garg from Ghaziabad, Sandeep Singh from Atrauli, Sunil Sharma from Sahibabad will contest. Former Uttarakhand governor and party’s national vice president Baby Rani Maurya will contest from Agra Rural, Yogesh Dhama from Baghpat, Brijesh Singh Rawat from Deoband and Ritesh Gupta from Moradabad Nagar. The party has fielded 21 new candidates.
Many ministers, MLAs left BJP
Dharmendra Pradhan also spoke about the achievements of the Central and State Governments on this occasion. He said that even the Dalit leaders would be contested on the seats of the general category. The party has given ticket to Dalit leader Jagpal from the general seat of Saharanpur Dehat. It is worth noting that in the last few days, the BJP has been hit one after the other in Uttar Pradesh and due to these shocks, the party has definitely been shaken. Swami Prasad Maurya, Dharam Singh Saini, Dara Singh Chauhan resigned from the Yogi cabinet and many MLAs also left the BJP.