UP Election 2022: BJP panel meet today to decide candidates for first phase

Lucknow, Jan 10: The Bharatiya Janata Party's election committee likely to meet in Lucknow on Monday to finalise the candidates for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The meeting would take place at 4 pm and the leaders will also discuss BJP's poll strategy in the crucial election.

The 24-member panel includes Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, party's state chief Swatantra Dev Sing, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, state general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal, assistant general secretary Karmveer Singh, former state president and MP Ramapati Ram Tripathi, national vice-president Baby Rani Maurya, vice-president Rekha Verma and general secretary Arun Singh.

The BJP has its task cut out in Uttar Pradesh to break a jinx under which no party has won two consecutive assembly elections in the state after 1985.

Spread over seven phases, moving sequentially from the west to the east of the vast state, the 403-seat polls will have a major bearing on the 2024 parliamentary elections, when the party hopes to return to power in Delhi under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Union Minister Amit Shah, who has been spearheading the ruling party's campaigns in UP in the past elections, indicated that much a few weeks back at a rally that scotched speculation that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is now out of favour with the BJP's central leadership.

"The foundation of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, which has to be won under the leadership of Modi ji, will be laid in the 2022 assembly elections here," he said.

The state will vote on February 10, 14, 20, 23, 27, March 3 and 7. The results will be declared on March 10 along with the four other poll-bound states of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

The BJP had registered a landslide victory in 2017 assembly polls winning 312 seats on its own, and 325 if the those won by the allies are also counted. Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party was a distant second then at 49. Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party won 19 seats.

Apna Dal (Sonelal) got nine, two more than the Congress tally. The SP has emerged as the major contender to power, and the Congress is under pressure to come up with better numbers, now that the campaign is under the direct charge of general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.