With all the three major political parties -- Samajwadi Party(SP), Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) and the Bharatiya Janta Party - had either selected majority of it’s candidates for next Parliamentary elections in Uttar Pradesh are on verge of giving it a final shape, the oldest and biggest political group - Congress, has not even set his house (Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee) in order.
While the ruling SP has already announced candidates in the 76 seats out of the total 80 in the state, the BSP is also giving final touches to its candidates lists. The BJP is set to start the selection process this month and announce them by November but the Congress reportedly is lagging behind in the effort. What is more surprising that Nirmal Khatri now already completed one year in office as State president, but he
failed to find enough time to select his own State level committee. Not only this, the new incharge of the party affairs here in UP, Madhusudan Mistri, who review the position at all the eight zonal level in the State, had announced that by August 15, even all the block level committees will be appointed as this time they will select candidates for Parliament on their recommendations. However, this also remained to be mere announcement. Except for declaring city and district presidents, the local committees are still to be appointed. Interestingly, in the state capital, newly nominated city president, Neeraj Bora selected few of his team members but even that has been disbanded by zonal president Dr Muslim, reportedly as he was not taken into confidence. It may be also mentioned here that on suggections of Mistri, Congress Yuvraj, Rahul Gandhi allocated ten parliament constituencies to all the eight minister representing UP and asked them to visit at least two of them every month and spread the Party base. However, till now none of the minister took the matter
seriously.
Sources said that to decide the lok Sabha poll strategy, the SP and the BSP are convening national and state executive meetings this month. While the national executive of the SP will be held on September 11 and 12 in Haridwar, the state executive of the BJP is slated in the last week of this month in Mathura-Vrindavan. Congress is the only party which is yet to announce its state executive. Meanwhile, the SP is set to change 15 per cent of its declared candidates due to different reasons. While UP assembly speaker Mata Prasad Pandey, who has been given ticket from Dumariaganj seat, is set to be replaced by a new candidate due to his illness. Similarly, the SP candidates in Gonda, Azamgarh, Sant Kabir Nagar, Deoria and other places could also be changed, highly placed sources in the party disclosed. The party is yet to announce its candidates at Congress strong hold of Rae Bareli and Amethi seats while candidate for the Rampur seat will be decided by cabinet minister Mohammad Azam Khan. Similarly BJP UP unit had started receiving names of
probable candidates from all 80 lok Sabha constituencies as early as May with the state election committee also taking an overview of these names. The party had plans to announce the candidates earlier so that it gets enough time to work in respective constituencies. The state unit had sent 23 teams of observers to all constituencies to collect feedbacks about probable candidates. But the process, got stuck with the party cadre getting busy with constituting booth-level committees. After making a panel of names for each constituency, the lists would be tabled before the state election committee headed by party's state unit president laxmikant Bajpai. Thecommittee will shortlist the candidates and send the list to central election committee headed by national president Rajnath Singh.
BJP leaders claim that meetings regarding selection of candidates would start after September 15 and the names could be declared by November. The party will declare the lS candidates first in UP as SP and BSP have declared their candidates. The BSP has already announced candidates in all the 80 seats but party supremo Mayawati is yet to make it official as several changes are observed every day. Party sources said BSP president Mayawati is the sole authority to decide
on the names of the candidate though the coordinators were directed from time to time to announce the candidates name at the local level.
But as the Congress leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, has announced that the lok Sabha elections would be held on time, so the political parties particularly the Congress and BJP are taking their own time in selecting the lS candidates. However, all the four political parties might go for changing their candidates after viewing last minute changes in scenario on basis of caste and communal factor besides any other issue which would influence poll prospect.