The BJP on Monday cleared the names of 149 candidates for 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly, including former State unit president and MlA laxmikant Bajpai, national secretary and media-in-charge Shrikant Sharma and grandson of former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh. Names of 22 sitting legislators figured in the list of candidates for UP Assembly seats going to polls in first two phases (of seven-phase elections) on February 11 and February 15. In the first phase of election, the BJP has 11 sitting MlAs while the SP and the BSP have 24 each.
The BJP also released the list of 64 candidates for the 70-member Uttarakhand Assembly. Three Congress leaders, who joined the BJP on Monday, and all but one Congress rebel, who jumped on to the saffron bandwagon last year, have been fielded by the party as its candidates in Uttarakhand Assembly polls.
The UP list includes the names of sitting MlAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, both accused in Muzaffarnagar riot cases, dismissed as a conspiracy by them. Som is a sitting MlA and a BJP candidate from Sardhana. However, mystery remained over the fate of Union Home Minister and UP heavyweight Rajnath Singh’s son Pankaj Singh, whose name did not figure in the list.
The BJP has withheld the names of its candidates for two crucial seats Sahibabad and Noida from where Pankaj Singh’s name has been doing the rounds.
The selection of candidates is a reflection of party’s motto of “winnability’.
It has given ticket to eight law makers from other parties who have joined BJP. Rani Pakshilikha Singh, wife of a former Minister in the Akhilesh Yadav Government Raja Aridaman Singh who had joined the BJP only on Sunday, was given ticket from Bah.
The party has dropped its sitting legislator from Meerut South Sadar Ravindra and has included two former MPs Chetan Chauhan and Ramesh Tomar. Chetan Chauhan is candidate from Naugawan Sadat. Chahan was MP from Amroha.
The BJP Central Election Committee is expected to hasten declaring another chunk of names for UP on Tuesday. Bajpai, who preceded the incumbent State president Keshav Prasad Maurya, is a sitting MlA from Meerut from where he would be contesting again.
Shrikant Sharma, a familiar name in the media circles, is a BJP candidate from Mathura Assembly constituency.
“We have included all sections of society in our list,” said Senior BJP leader and Union Minister JPNadda. Asked about caste break up of candidates, he said the party does not allot tickets on caste consideration.
The districts going to polls in the first phase are Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Hapur, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura, Hathras, Agra, Firozabad, Etah and Kasganj.
The filing nominations for these constituencies will start on Tuesday and the last date is January 24. Withdrawal of candidature could be done till January 27 and polling will be on February 11. The State will have seven-phase polling between February 11 and March 8.
The first phase will cover districts in western Uttar Pradesh where the BJP has done well in the lok Sabha elections in 2014.
Earlier in the day, the BJP announced six candidates for 117-member Punjab assembly, seven more candidates for Goa polls and named 64 candidates for Uttarakhand. The party has already announced 36 of the 40 candidates for Goa.
As in Goa where the BJP has not announced a Chief Ministerial candidate, the party has, so far, not named any Chief Ministerial candidate for UP and Uttarakhand.
In Uttarakhand, the BJP has fielded its State president Ajay Bhat from Ranikhet, from where he is the sitting MlA, Ritu Khanduri Bhushan, daughter of former Chief Minister BC Khanduri, and former MP Satpal Maharaj, another former Congress veteran.
In place of former Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, who led the Congress flock to the BJP camp, it has given ticket to his son Saurabh Bahuguna. Yashpal Arya, former Congress chief in the State, and his son Sanjeev Arya besides Kedar Singh Rawat, all of whom joined BJP on Monday in the presence of its chief Amit Shah, have received the party nomination.
BJP Central Election Committee’s Secretary J P Nadda said all the sitting MlAs of the party besides those who joined it from Congress have been given tickets. The hilly State is going to the polls on February 4.