Lucknow: The BJP’s Swatantra Dev Singh and the Congress’ Ajay Kumar Lallu are keen to hit a victory note as their party’s Uttar Pradesh unit chiefs in the bypolls to 11 Assembly seats Monday to boost morale of their workers before the 2022 state elections.
Of the 11 seats going to the bypolls, eight were held by the BJP and the Pratapgarh seat belonged to its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal). The BJP, BSP, SP and the Congress have fielded their candidates on all the seats.
The saffron party is hoping to increase its tally in the Legislative Assembly by registering a win in Rampur, held by the Samajwadi Party (SP), and in Jalalpur, where the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won last time around.
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, 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 when 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 an 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 a tie-up with the Congress.
Campaigning for the bypolls saw Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath targeting the Congress on the issue of abrogation of Article 370 provisions. He also hit out the SP and BSP over corruption.
Both Swatantra Dev Singh and Ajay Kumar Lallu exuded confidence that their parties will emerge victorious in the bypolls. While, Swatantra claimed that the bypolls will be ‘one-sided’ for the BJP, Lallu said there are ‘indications of good results for the party’.
Voting will be conducted days after the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari, a leader of a lesser known political outfit Hindu Samaj Party here, with the Congress latching onto it to highlight the ‘poor law-and-order situation’ in the state.
However, Yogi Adityanath termed the murder ‘an act of mischief to create terror’, and said that such incidents will not be tolerated and those involved will not be spared.
In total, 109 candidates are 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.
In the UP Legislative Assembly, currently the BJP has 302 members, the SP 47 and the BSP 18. The BJP’s ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) has eight legislators, while the Congress has seven MLAs in the House.
PTI