Gearing up for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has prepared a mega plan and if sources are to be believed, the party is set to field all its veterans in the upcoming polls.
The ruling party leaders who are certain to contest the elections include Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh, cabinet minister Mahendra Singh and others.
The BJP holds an overwhelming majority of 312 seats in the 403-seat UP Assembly at present and aims to win over 300 plus seats in the next polls.
Well-placed sources in the BJP said in Lucknow on Saturday that Yogi Adityanath, currently a member of UP Legislative Council, would contest the poll from any constituency of his home district Gorakhpur. Similarly, other MLCs like Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya would contest from Sirathu seat of Kaushambi, and Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma from one of the Assembly constituencies of Lucknow and minister Mahendra Singh from Pratapgarh.
In 2019, Keshav Prasad Maurya was elected to the Lok Sabha from Phulpur constituency while Dinesh Sharma was elected twice as Mayor of Lucknow.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently kicked off the UP poll campaign by praising Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's Covid-19 handling during his recent visit to his Lok Sabha constituency, Varanasi.
The UP cabinet is also likely to be expanded and seven ministers are expected to be inducted.
The sources said that appreciation from the prime minister sent a strong message to the Yogi detractors that they must get themselves ready to fight the UP Assembly polls under his leadership.
Earlier, the BJP organised a meeting of district working committees across the state. In the meeting held in Lucknow, organisation general secretary Sunil Bansal said that people had to be connected as much as possible by running a special campaign and making door-to-door contact about the plans and ideology of the BJP. He recalled that Jan Sangh was once started with a team of five members and as on date was the largest outfit in the world.
With barely seven months remaining for the Assembly elections in UP, the BJP is trying to do its best to ensure that the party wins more seats than the 2017 polls. The same thing was discussed in the coordination meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionaries held for two days last week. The RSS officials wanted the upcoming elections to be fought on the issue of nationalism and Hindutva with Yogi Adityanath as the mascot.
The BJP is presently facing challenges on several fronts in Uttar Pradesh. Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party chief Om Prakash Rajbhar has firmed up an alliance with All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) naming it as Bhagidari Sankalp. Besides, caste-based smaller outfits like Azad Samaj Party, Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) and also parties like Aam Aadmi Party, Shiv Sena and Janata Dal United (JDU) have announced that they would be contesting the UP Assembly polls next year.