Lucknow: With the second phase of urban local body polls over on Thursday, the focus has now shifted to Saturday’s results, as the outcome would also determine the political standing of leaders tasked with campaign duties in these local body polls.
While the BJP deployed ministers and senior functionaries for the campaign, the main opposition Samajwadi Party too tasked former ministers and party veterans with campaigning, as did the Bahujan Samaj Party.
The Congress and AAP also launched an aggressive campaign with the Congress-backed candidate making his presence felt on a seat like Mathura. The Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (SP-RLD) parties backed the Congress-supported candidate on the seat, in what many believe was symbolic of the efforts of opposition unity that were underway ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
“We have done our bit and now we are confident of our party candidate’s chances in Hathras as well as in all other places across the state. As for reward, the party candidate winning is the biggest award,” said a Yogi minister who was part of the campaign.
“Almost all political parties deployed bigwigs in campaign and made them in-charges in various urban centres where elections were held. In many ways, this is also a test of the political mood of the people in urban areas. There are candidates who are relatives of sitting lawmakers in many parties like the SP and the BSP. In that sense, the outcome would also determine the standing of leaders, especially with Lok Sabha polls just near,” said AP Tiwari, a political analyst.
{{/usCountry}}“Almost all political parties deployed bigwigs in campaign and made them in-charges in various urban centres where elections were held. In many ways, this is also a test of the political mood of the people in urban areas. There are candidates who are relatives of sitting lawmakers in many parties like the SP and the BSP. In that sense, the outcome would also determine the standing of leaders, especially with Lok Sabha polls just near,” said AP Tiwari, a political analyst.
{{/usCountry}}While chief minister Yogi Adityanath held record number of rallies in support of his party’s candidates, for the first time Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav also joined the urban local body poll campaign, holding road shows in Saharanpur and Aligarh and travelling by metro train in Lucknow and then holding a presser at the Gomti river front in the state capital to highlight the development in urban areas that was done by him.
“Even BSP chief Mayawati convened a meeting of party coordinators to finalise the strategy for the polls and then kept tweeting throughout the two-phased elections, indicating that the BSP, which won a solitary seat in the 2022 UP polls, was looking to salvage some pride ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress too expressed itself in these polls though it would have to do much more to make an impact,” said Athar Siddiqui of the Centre of Objective Research and Development (CORD).