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BSP takes lead, SP undecided on finalising LS poll candidates
The BSP has appointed its candidates as the in-charge of their respective seats and given them a go ahead to launch their election campaign.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has taken the lead over rival political parties and its alliance partner Samajwadi Party (SP) in finalising candidates on 38 Lok Sabha seats which it will contest in Uttar Pradesh.
The BSP has appointed its candidates as the in-charge of their respective seats and given them a go ahead to launch their election campaign.
After sealing an alliance with the SP on January 12, BSP president Mayawati and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday announced the seats that the two parties would contest.
According to the arrangement, while the BSP will field candidates on 38 seats, the SP has been allotted 37. The alliance will not field candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli while three seats have been set aside for the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the SP had bagged five seats and stood on the second position on 31 while the BSP had failed to open its account but was runner-up on 34 seats.
However, according to the seat-sharing formula, 11 seats on which the SP stood second in the last election have been allotted to BSP while 8 seats on which BSP was the runner-up, have been allotted to SP.
A BSP leader, who did not wish to be named, said: “The party president has finalised candidates on 25 seats and zonal coordinators have been directed to announce the candidates in the meetings of party office-bearers to be held in the constituencies. The candidates on remaining seats will be finalised within a few days.”
“Mayawati is likely to make official announcement of 38 candidates after the declaration of Lok Sabha election schedule by the Election Commission,” he said.
The in-charges appointed by the party include Aftab Alam (Domariyaganj), Nakul Dubey (Sitapur), Kushal Tiwari (Sant Kabir Nagar), RS Kushwaha (Salempur), CL Verma (Mohanlalganj), Haji Yaqub Qureshi (Meerut), Sanjay Bhati (Gautam Buddh Nagar), Ramji Shukla (Akbarpur), Manoj Soni (Agra), Afzal Ansari (Ghazipur), Rangnath Mishra (Bhadohi), Haji Fazlur Rehman (Saharanpur), Tribhuwan Ram (Macchlishahr), Seema Upadhyaya (Fatehpur Sikri), Ziauddin (Amroha) and Haji Iqbal (Bijnore).
To give momentum to election campaign, the party has directed the office-bearers of booth committees and bhai-chara committees to hold meetings in all Lok Sabha constituencies.
Party spokesman Sudhindra Bhadouria said, “BSP is a cadre-based political party and its workers follow the command of their president. The foot soldiers of the party are ready for electoral battle. Our aim is to realise behenji’s dream of empowering the suppressed and spread the ideals of Dr BR Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram.”
Presently, Mayawati is camping in Delhi finalising alliance and candidates in other states.
In contrast, the Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders have clarity on two seats only – Firozabad and Badaun – from where sitting MPs Akshaya Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav will contest Lok Sabha elections once again.
A senior SP leader said, “We even don’t know about Etawah, Mainpuri, Kannauj and Sambhal seats. We are not sure if ‘netaji’ (SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav) will contest Mainpuri seat on an SP ticket. There is still no clarity from where sitting MPs Tej Pratap Singh Yadav and Dimple Yadav will contest. Will Akhilesh ji contest from Kannauj or Azamgarh, if at all he contests the polls? Answers to all these questions will be known in about a fortnight.”
The fate of Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the two LS seats that were won by the SP in by-elections, and Kairana (which is with RLD) is also not clear.
He said earlier the SP used to seek applications from aspirants but the party had done away with the practice as it was waiting for seat-sharing.
“Now, that the seat-sharing has been announced, there will not be any application process. The national president, along with some top leaders, will decide the candidates. We understand that Akhilesh ji has already made up his mind on many seats,” he added.
However, the SP leaders agree that the BSP has more clarity on ticket distribution.
On Thursday, Mulayam had asked Akhilesh to declare candidates as soon as possible so that they could start campaigning.
