Urban local Bodies elections will be the first major test of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the BJP’s poluarity. The party came to power in the State after 15 years by bagging 325 seats out of the total 403 seats in the Assembly.
The UlB poll is important for the Chief Minister as he has emerged as a star campaigner of the BJP after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP has been promoting Yogi Adityanath at the national forum and he was the star attraction of the party’s campaign against the ruling left front in Kerala. Besides, Yogi is campaigning in poll-bound Gujarat — the home State of Prime Minister Narnedra Modi and is likely to extensively campaign in Himanchal Pradesh ahead of the Assembly poll.
The Urban locaalBodies elections will also be a test for ‘Modi factor’ as the BJP in the last over three years has given credit of its electoral victories across the country to Modi - be it Assembly, Parliament, Urban local Bodies or Panchyat polls.
During the March Assembly elections, the BJP faced tough time in persuading its traditional voters — the traders — unhappy with the loss of business due to demonetisation of high value notes.
This time it’s the Goods and Services Tax. The complicated new tax regime billed as the biggest ever reform in history of India, coupled with high compliance cost and glitches in filing tax returns have miffed the traders. Winning over this section of urban voters will be a prime task for the state BJP brass.
State Election Commission has announced that the election notification will be issued on October 25. It has also announced the reservation of seats of Chairman of Nagar Nigam and Nagar Palika Parishad for different categories like SC, ST, OBCs and women.
Conscious of the enormity of the task of performing well in the elections, the BJP is treading cautiously. The UlB elections was on to of the agenda of the meeting of state BJP executive which concluded at Kanpur on October 12.
The focus of speeches of all BJP leaders during the meet was the UlB elections and they deliberated on possible challenges before the party in retaining its stronghold and how to overcome Opposition challenges.
The stakes are high for the BJP as urban areas have been a traditional stronghold of the party and ithas maintained its edge in Urban local Bodies even when it was out of power in the State from 2002 to March 2017.
At stake are total 653 seats which include 16 Nagar Nigam, 199 Nagar Palika Parishad and 439 Nagar Panchyats or Town Area Committee. The Yogi government recently upgraded two cities as Nagar Nigam – Ayodhya and Mathura-Vrindavan.
In the last UlB poll, the BJP had won all 10 Nagar Nigams but had lost the Mayoral elections of Allahabad and Bareilly.
Protecting its turf is of extreme importance as the party is in power both at the Centre and UP. Major Opposition parties -Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are likely to contest the UlB elections on their election symbols which has added to to the worries of the ruling BJP.