UP Assembly Elections 2022: Samajwadi Party (SP) also won only 47 seats in 2017 elections in Uttar Pradesh. The biggest disappointment for Akhilesh Yadav was that the BJP won 23 of the 29 seats in the eight districts known as the ‘Yadav Belt’ in the state. The Agra-Lucknow Expressway, built by Akhilesh as Chief Minister, connects these eight districts from Firozabad to Kannauj.
According to News18, visiting these districts to find out the election environment shows that the Samajwadi Party is now making a lot of effort to return to its stronghold.
Malkhan Singh, who is playing a card game in Saifai village of Yadav family in Etawah, says, “It was a wave election. Now the wave is over. We are all voting for SP once again. First, in the family.” There was a misunderstanding, but now everything is fine and amicable.”
After a family patch-up, Akhilesh himself is contesting from the nearby Karhal seat, while his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav is contesting from Jaswantnagar.
But if we travel further on the expressway till Kannauj, the story changes. This area is also the ‘Potato Belt’ of UP. Here Mangal Singh is working hard to pack his potato crop and is praising the BJP and CM Yogi Adityanath.
He said, “I get around Rs 450 per quintal for my crop… We make some profit, but the bigger issue is our security and national interest, so people are inclined towards BJP. This area was earlier a SP stronghold, But not now.”
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In another field, Anita is also harvesting potatoes and says that she will vote for Narendra Modi. “We will vote for the person who sent us ration and kept us safe,” she says.
In the Yadav belt, where young boys are often seen wearing red caps on motorcycles, there is an often-repeated statement of locals: “Now the fight is between safety and honour”, as some refer to widespread chaos. . The SP rule, while some say that the Yadavs have been maligned and humiliated under Yogi Adityanath’s ‘Thakurwad Sarkar’.
While campaigning in Kannauj on Tuesday, CM Yogi Adityanath announced that the state would soon start procuring the potato crop at MSP, a move that the BJP hopes will attract farmers to its side.
News18.com visited 14 districts of the state in the last 10 days, covering around 70 seats, of which 59 will go to polls in the third phase on Sunday, February 20.
These include the ‘Yadav Belt’, the urban and rural seats of Kanpur, Unnao and the sensitive district of Lakhimpur, where farmers were crushed by a convoy of a BJP minister’s son. In 2017, out of 59 seats to be held in the third phase, the BJP had won 49 seats, while the SP had to be content with just eight seats. BSP and Congress got one seat each.
A young Nitin Kumar told News18.com in Kannauj that BJP candidate and former IPS officer Asim Arun will win the seat in his first election. “The voter is now aware and knows who is what. The caste barriers are breaking. Even some Yadavs are moving towards the BJP,” he said.
Arun’s case may, in fact, show that selecting a candidate for either the BJP or the SP can be the key to success in many seats. Like the Sirasganj seat in Firozabad, the only seat the Samajwadi Party won in Firozabad district in the 2017 election, Hari Om Yadav, a relative of his family, is now the BJP candidate from the seat.
Unlike urban areas, rural areas do not hear about issues like nationalism, but government schemes for villagers during Covid-19 are well visible.
In Unnao, where the BJP won five out of six seats, many voters expressed happiness over government schemes and many others shed light on the issues. The Kuldeep Singh Sengar issue has mellowed over time among the local people and the fight in seats like Pura, Sadar and Mohan has become interesting on local issues.
The owner of a dhaba on the outskirts of Unnao declined to talk much, saying, “This time it’s a thorn in the side, that’s all I can say.”
During the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP had won five out of six seats in Unnao, one seat went to the BSP. However, later the BSP MLA had joined the BJP.
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