New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday held a marathon meeting in which Union Home Minister Amit Shah, party president J. P Nadda and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also attended. The meeting, which lasted for about four hours, was attended by both the Deputy Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Keshav Prasad and Dinesh Sharma, besides state BJP President Swatantra Dev Singh.
According to information received from the sources, the party discussed the names of the candidates for the assembly seats where voting is to be held in the third and fourth phases. He said that on January 19, a meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee would be held, in which the names of the candidates would be finalised.
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It is noteworthy that on Saturday, the BJP had announced 107 candidates for Uttar Pradesh. In this, it was announced that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will contest from Gorakhpur city and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya will contest from Sirathu seat in Kaushambi district.
Of the 107 seats where the party had announced candidates, 105 seats will go to polls in the first and second phases. In Gorakhpur, polling is to be held in the sixth phase on March 3 while in Sirathu the fifth phase will be held on February 27. In the first list released by the party, the tickets of 20 MLAs were also cut. Sources said that the party has also started an exercise to check the dissatisfaction due to ticket loss and for this a committee of MPs has also been constituted.
It is to be known that in Agra district, the party has cut the tickets of five MLAs and so far the maximum dissatisfaction has come to the fore. A total of 113 seats are to be voted in the first and second phase, while in the second phase, on February 14, voting will be held on 55 seats in the state. For the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly, 59 seats in the third phase, 60 seats in the fourth phase on February 23, 60 seats in the fifth phase on February 27, 57 seats in the sixth phase on March 3 and the seventh phase on March 7. Voting will be held in 54 seats.
Significantly, in the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP alone had won 312 seats and its allies 13. The Samajwadi Party, which became the main opposition party after losing power, could win only 47 seats. (agency)