Swatantra Dev Singh of Bharatiya Janata Party and Ajay Kumar ‘Lallu’ of Congress are keen to hit a victory note as their party’s Uttar Pradesh unit chiefs in the bypolls to 11 assembly seats on Monday to boost morale of their workers before the 2022 state elections.
Leaders of both these parties took the command of the state unit of their respective parties recently.
Of the 11 seats going to the bypolls, BJP has the highest stake as it faces the challenge of retaining its eight seats and one of its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal). The Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are fighting to retain one seat each while Congress has none.
The BJP, BSP, SP and the Congress have fielded their candidates on all the seats. The ruling party is hoping to increase its tally in the legislative assembly by registering a win in Rampur, a seat held by the SP, and in Jalalpur, the seat held by the BSP.
On the other hand, the opposition parties are expecting to repeat the success they tasted in the bypolls to Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana Lok Sabha seats in 2018 and in Noorpur assembly constituency last year.
The Congress, in particular, hopes to show signs of revival in UP after its battering in the Lok Sabha polls in which it won just one seat — party chief Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli constituency.
In contrast, the BJP won 62 of the 80 parliamentary seats in the state and its ally bagged two more.
The BSP and the SP, which were in an alliance in the general elections, ended their tie-up after the polls. The BSP-SP combine won 15 seats. In the 2017 assembly polls, the SP had forged alliance with the Congress.
Campaigning for the bypolls saw Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath targeting the Congress on the issue of abrogation of Article 370. He also hit out the SP and the BSP over corruption.
Both Swatantra Dev Singh and Ajay Kumar ‘Lallu’ exuded confidence that their parties would emerge victorious in the bypolls. While Singh claimed that the bypolls would be “one-sided” for the BJP, Lallu said there were “indication of good results for the party”.
Voting will be held days after the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari, a leader of a lesser-known political outfit Hindu Samaj Party in Lucknow, with the Congress latching onto it to highlight the “poor” law and order situation in the state.
There are 109 candidates in the fray for the bypolls to the assembly seats of Gangoh, Rampur, Iglas (SC), Lucknow Cantonment, Govindnagar, Manikpur, Pratapgarh, Zaidpur (SC), Jalalpur, Balha (SC) and Ghosi. The bypolls were necessitated after some MLAs won the Lok Sabha elections and resigned as members of the assembly.
There are 13 candidates each in Lucknow Cantonment and Jalalpur constituencies, followed by 11 each in Ghosi, Gangoh, Pratapgarh and Balha (SC); nine each in Govindnagar and Manikpur; seven each in Rampur, Iglas (SC) and Zaidpur (SC) seats.
In the UP Legislative Assembly, currently the BJP has 302 members, the SP 47 and the BSP 18. BJP’s ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) has eight legislators, while the Congress has seven MLAs in the House.
Meanwhile, Chief Electoral Officer of UP, Ajay Kumar Shukla, said elaborate arrangements had been made to conduct free, fair and peaceful bypolls.
He said 41.08 lakh voters were expected to exercise their franchise in 2,307 polling stations having 4,529 polling booths and arrangements had been made for webcasting in 429 critical polling booths.