BJP set to announce lists of candidates for UP, U’khand on January 15, 17

New Delhi: BJP is set to announce lists of its candidates for the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly polls besides that of Uttarakhand on January 15 and 17 with top party leaders from states being engaged in a series of meetings to sort out the probables.
Its Central Election Committee, which included Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, will be meeting on Sunday and Tuesday to make the announcements.
Shah has held several meetings, including one on Thursday at his residence, with top UP leaders, including Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra and Uma Bharti besides state party president Keshav Prasad Maurya, state in-charge O P Mathur and Yogi Aditynath in a effort to build a unanimity over candidates.
There have been reports of Adityanath, a Lok Sabha member from Gorakhpur, being unhappy with the leadership but sources played them down. Shah has been pulling out all stops to lead the party to victory in UP, which in terms of political implications is more important than all other four poll-bound states combined.
It has been out of power in the state since 2002 and was a declining force till the ‘Modi wave’ catapulted the party to an unprecedented success in 2014 Lok Sabha polls when it won 71 of the 80 seats.
Party sources believe that it may not be possible for the saffron outfit to repeat the 2014 feat of capturing over 42 per cent of vote share but it hopes to emerge a winner in the state’s fractured polity by garnering more that 30 per cent of votes.
SP and BSP won a majority of 403 seats in 2012 and 2007 assembly elections by pulling in 30.4 and 29.16 per cent of votes.
Besides its core support base drawn from upper castes and bania community, it has assiduously cultivated non-Yadav backward castes and sections to dalits as it works to put together a winning social coalition.
Facing challenge from strong regional satraps like Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati, BJP has not announced a chief ministerial candidate, largely because it lacks a leader with pan-state base like father-son duo of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and Mayawati of BSP.
In Uttar Pradesh, which has a 403-member House, polls will be held on February 11 (73 constituencies), February 15 (67 constituencies), February 19 (69), February 23 (53), February 27 (52), March 3 (49) and March 8 (40). (PTI)