With Samajwadi Party and BSP having declared their candidates for the Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be in no hurry and will announce its candidates after January 15, 2017.
A senior BJP leader told The Pioneer that the leadership is busy with programmes and different rallies. “In fact we are not in a hurry to declare candidates. The State president has already announced programmes till mid January. So, I can safely say that the candidates will be announced after January 15,” he said.
The leader said that the party’s main focus is on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in lucknow on January 2 in which over 5 lakh people across UP are expected to participate.
“Then we will have Kisan goshtis (meetings) from January 5 and in between the party will be organising backward leaders meetings. So, it is a hectic schedule for us,” he said.
In fact, it would be BJP’s strategy to delay the process of ticket distribution because of new leaders and sitting legislators from other parties joining the party.
Though BJP leaders claim that there is no assurance given to these leaders, still it is believed that all sitting legislators will contest elections on party tickets.
Meanwhile, BJP leaders along with leaders of students unions of different colleges held meetings with people asking them to attend PM’s proposed rally. Stress is given to invite members of trading community, who are staunch supporters of the BJP, but have faced the demonetisation brunt.
“The response of the people has been very encouraging. We expect that over 5 lakh people will attend the rally,” BJP general secretary Vidyasagar Sonkar said.