Several ministers on BJP’s new list of 91 candidates, Ayodhya Sadar MLA retained

The latest BJP list has 25 OBCs, 21 dalits, 20 Brahmins, 18 Thakurs, four Bhumihars, two Baniyas and one candidate from the Kayastha community; chief minister’s media advisor among those named

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) named 91 more candidates for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections on Friday and the party’s latest list has several ministers and retains sitting MLA Ved Prakash Gupta from the Ayodhya Sadar assembly seat. For the four other seats in Ayodhya district, the BJP has reposed faith in either the sitting MLAs or their family members.

With this, the BJP has now named 295 candidates, including 37 women, for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections so far. (REPRESENTATIVE  IMAGE)

The BJP has kept up the suspense on the much-in-demand Lucknow assembly seats, for which several party leaders are also pitching for a ticket for their family members.

With this, the BJP has now named 295 candidates, including 37 women, for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections so far. Its pre-poll ally Apna Dal (S) has also declared candidates on four seats so far.

The BJP’s new list showcases chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s clout as several leaders considered close to him are on it. His media advisor Shalabhmani Tripathi, a former journalist, has been named the candidate for the Deoria assembly seat.

The list of 91 candidates includes 25 OBCs, 21 dalits, 20 Brahmins, 18 Thakurs, four Bhumihars, two Baniyas and one from the Kayastha community.

In Ayodhya Sadar, Ved Prakash Gupta would be up against the Samajwadi Party’s Tej Narayan Pandey “Pawan Pandey” who had staged a big political upset in the 2012 UP assembly elections by winning from the Ayodhya seat on the Samajwadi Party ticket and defeating the BJP’s Lallu Singh. After the win, Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav in whose regime the police had opened fire on the kar sevaks in Ayodhya in 1990, had famously remarked, “Ayodhya ne mujhe maaf kar diya (Ayodhya has forgiven me).”

This time, too, the BJP has made firing on kar sevaks in Ayodhya in the 1990s during the Samajwadi Party rule as a big campaign issue.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s candidature from the Ayodhya Sadar assembly constituency was proposed before the BJP decided to field him from the Gorakhpur urban seat.

The Ayodhya Sadar assembly constituency is considered a VIP seat as Ram Janmabhoomi is part of this assembly segment.

For the other seats in Ayodhya district, the BJP has retained its sitting MLAs Baba Gorakhnath from Milkipur (reserved constituency), Ram Chandra Yadav from Rudauli. Dr Amit Singh Chauhan will be the BJP candidate from Bikapur. He is the son of sitting MLA Shobha Singh Chauhan. From Gosainganj assembly constituency (also in Ayodhya), Aarti Tewari, the wife of former BJP MLA Indra Pratap Tewari “Khabbu Tewari”, will be the party candidate.

Indra Pratap won the Gosainganj seat in 2017 as the BJP candidate. But his membership of the assembly was terminated last year after he was held guilty by the MP-MLA court of Ayodhya in a 29-year-old fake marksheet case.

Apart from anti-incumbency, the BJP candidate is facing traders’ ire in Ayodhya Sadar assembly segment. For the proposed road widening project in the temple town, a large number of shops and commercial establishments in this assembly segment will have to be demolished. Not only traders, but other locals and saints are also opposing the project. Ved Prakash Gupta is banking on the Ram temple issue as construction work began in August 2020.

In the 2012 assembly polls, the SP had won four out of five assembly seats, except Rudauli, in Ayodhya district (then known as Faizabad). Ayodhya Sadar, Rudauli, Gosaiganj, Bikapur and Milkipur are the five seats in Ayodhya district.

The BJP has still not named its candidate on the Karhal assembly seat of Mainpuri from where Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has decided to contest. “Have some patience,” a BJP leader said when asked by when the party would declare the candidate.

The ministers who have been named as candidates from their traditional seats include social welfare minister Ramapati Shastri from Mankapur (reserved seat), health minister Jai Pratap Singh from Bansi, basic education minister Satish Chandra Dwivedi from Itwa, agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi from Pathardeva, civil aviation minister Nand Gopal Nandi from Allahabad South, Sriram Chauhan from Khajni, Sidharth Nath Singh from Allahabad West, Suresh Kumar Pasi from Jagdishpur (reserved) seat, Rajendra Pratap Singh ‘Moti Babu’ from Patti, Jai Prakash Nishad from Rudrapur/Deoria and Upendra Tiwari from Phephna. Former UP minister Anupama Jaiswal has been also named as a candidate from Bahraich.

Senior UP minister Mukut Bihari Verma has been replaced on the Kaiserganj assembly seat by his son Gaurav. Recently, Mukut Bihari, an old Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) hand, was in the news for his emphatic denial of the buzz that he was among the BJP leaders headed towards the Samajwadi Party.

“I am steeped in the RSS culture who will never quit the BJP,” he had said.

The BJP has so far named candidates on six of the 10 assembly seats in Rae Bareli and Amethi.

While Rae Bareli is the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the BJP wrested Amethi from the Congress in the 2019 parliamentary polls.

Union minister Smriti Irani’s say on the assembly seats in her Lok Sabha constituency Amethi was clear as the BJP named Ashok Kori from the Salon assembly constituency of Amethi. Ashok’s father Dal Bahadur Kori, the sitting MLA who had died of Covid-19, was considered a Smriti loyalist. The BJP nominated sitting MLA Mayankeshwar Saran Singh from Tiloi and Suresh Pasi, also a minister, from Jagdishpur (reserved) seat. The party is still to declare candidates on Amethi and Gauriganj assembly seats of the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency.

Similarly, in Rae Bareli, the BJP has already named former Congress lawmakers Aditi Singh (Rae Bareli Sadar) and Rakesh Pratap Singh (Harchandpur). It has also named Dhirendra Bahadur Singh from Sareni and is yet to declare candidates on Unchahar and Bachhrawan.

The BJP has named a woman candidate, Sindhuja Mishra, from Kunda in Pratapgarh, setting up an interesting contest on the seat that is considered the bastion of former minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh “Raja Bhaiya”.

The main opposition Samajwadi Party, too, has put up a candidate against Raghuraj Pratap Singh on the Kunda seat after nearly 15 years.

The BJP has also fielded Nagesh Pratap Singh from Rampur Khas, one of the few assembly constituencies from where the Congress has been winning consistently. Nagesh has found the party’s confidence despite his loss to Congress lawmaker Aradhana Misra ‘Mona’, the daughter of Congress heavyweight politician Pramod Tiwari.

While the BJP list contains the names of about 13 ministers, the most interest is on Lucknow’s Sarojininagar assembly seat represented by UP minister Swati Singh, whose husband and party vice-president Daya Shankar Singh is also lobbying for a ticket from the same seat. The party has not named the candidate for the Sarojininagar seat yet.

“There is no confusion. Only one of us will get the ticket. The BJP doesn’t believe in dynastic politics,” Daya Shankar said.

The BJP also held back declaration of the candidate for Unnao’s Bhagwant Nagar seat, currently held by UP assembly speaker Hriday Narain Dikshit, a political veteran. There is much speculation on the seat from where UP’s Jal Shakti minister Mahendra Singh might contest from. He is currently an MLC.

In Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, the BJP has fielded candidates on six of the 10 assembly seats in the district. This includes Manju Saroj from the Mehnagar seat. In the 2017 UP assembly polls, Manju Saroj had contested as a candidate of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, which had then fought the election in alliance with the BJP. Now, the SBSP is part of the Samajwadi Party alliance. Neelam Sonkar, a dalit who won the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Lalganj and is currently the UP BJP vice president, will be contesting her first assembly election from the Lalganj assembly seat.

On January 15, the party had named chief minister Yogi Adityanath and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya as candidates from Gorakhpur (Sadar) and Sirathu assembly seats in Kaushambi.