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Mission 2024: Now, 14 opposition-held LS seats in U.P. on BJP’s radar
Keeping 2024 LS Polls in mind, the BJP has started setting its booth-management and booth strengthening plans in order, especially in opposition citadels like Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Mainpuri, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav among others
Its overwhelming political dominance notwithstanding, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in no mood to let its cadre get complacent in Uttar Pradesh from where it is again expecting a big push as it targets a hat-trick of Lok Sabha (LS) poll wins in 2024.
With this in mind, the BJP has started setting its booth-management and booth strengthening plans in order, especially in opposition citadels like Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Mainpuri, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav among others.
In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP and its allies had won 64 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Now, after its recent wins in Azamgarh and Rampur LS bypolls, considered Samajwadi Party (SP) bastions, the BJP’s Lok Sabha strength from U.P. has gone up to 66, leaving out only 14 Lok Sabha seats where BJP doesn’t have its MPs.
The party, having set up the target of bagging all 80 Lok Sabha seats of U.P. in 2024, has now set its sights on these seats where chief minister Yogi Adityanath, BJP functionaries and Union ministers are expected to visit regularly.
The Union ministers, BJP leaders said, would visit these constituencies each month. These ministers would possibly be accompanied by senior party leaders or ministers of the Yogi government.
“These seats might have eluded the BJP but we will be telling the people of these constituencies that the ruling party hasn’t discriminated on development. The fruits of good governance are for all to have and like everywhere else, we will keep doing that in these constituencies too,” a senior U.P. minister said.
Union ministers, including agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomer, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union minister of state for science and technology Jitendra Singh and Union minister of state for education Annapurna Devi, are to divide these 14 opposition citadels between them and carry feedback about government plans, their implementation in these constituencies, people’s perception of government as well as their sitting MPs.
The feedback, party leaders said, would be scrutinised and form the basis of the party’s plan in these constituencies. A BJP leader said the party had made inroads in most of the opposition citadels in the 2022 U.P. polls and would look to build on those in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
“Take Mainpuri for instance. Of the four assembly segments - Mainpuri, Bhogaon, Kishni and Karhal – that make up the Lok Sabha seat of SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav, the BJP has won two. These include Mainpuri Sadar assembly seat held by minister Jaivir Singh and Bhogaon held by Ram Naresh Agnihotri. In Rae Bareli, the Congress doesn’t have a single lawmaker now. Now, these two, after the fall of Azamgarh and Rampur, are the biggest constituencies with impactful opposition presence and that is why we have shortlisted these,” a senior party leader said.
Political experts felt that BJP’s plan to focus on opposition citadels could well be strategic posturing. “To guard against cadre complacency and to send out a message that the party isn’t fearful of long anti-incumbency, rather confident of pro-incumbency, the BJP appears to have embarked on a clever campaign,” said AP Tiwari, a political analyst.
