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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Alliance arithmetic may make it difficult for BJP to repeat 2014 feat
The outcome in this region will largely depend on caste alignments, particularly of the Other Backward Classes and the Dalits. The BJP has not fielded its sitting MPs in three (Etawah, Hardoi and Misrikh) out of four reserved seats. In all, the BJP has changed six candidates in the 13 seats that will be voting.
Riding on the Narendra Modi wave, the Bharatiya Janata Party had in 2014 won 12 out of the 13 seats that will be going to the polls in the fourth phase on April 29. Matching the feat won’t be easy for the party despite Modi’s show of strength on April 26, when he filed his nomination in the presence of National Democratic Alliance leaders in Varanasi. The alliance formed by the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal poses a formidable challenge. Only in one seat — Jalaun in the Kanpur-Bundelkhand region — did the combined vote share of the SP-BSP alliance fall short of the BJP’s five years ago.
Former Union ministers and Congress leaders Salman Khursheed and Shri Prakash Jaiswal are contesting Farrukhabad and Kanpur, respectively. BJP’s Sakshi Maharaj, known for his controversial statements regarding women and Muslims, is in the fray in Unnao.
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Dimple Yadav, wife of SP president Akhilesh Yadav, is seeking a third term from Kannauj. The Yadav family has been holding the seat since 1998 when SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav won it for the first time and vacated it for his son Akhilesh, who has won it thrice since then.
WATCH| Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Watch out for these big fights in Phase 4
The outcome in this region will largely depend on caste alignments, particularly of the Other Backward Classes and the Dalits. The BJP has not fielded its sitting MPs in three (Etawah, Hardoi and Misrikh) out of four reserved seats. In all, the BJP has changed six candidates in the 13 seats that will be voting.
Almost all the constituencies voting on Monday are rural and united by poverty, farm distress and farmers’ suicides, said Siddharth Mukerji from the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow. “In this phase, poverty and social justice would play a role,” he added.
