Uttar Pradesh civic polls: BJP fields party workers while Opposition is in disarray
lucknow: With a focus on party workers, the BJP gears up for the urban civic polls starting next month, while the opposition parties are facing a revolt-like situation forcing party workers of Samajwadi Party and Congress to stage protests outside party offices.
The first phase of polling will be held on May 4 for municipal corporation seats including among others in PM Modi’s parliamentary constituency Varanasi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s home constituency Gorakhpur.
“Look how prepared the opposition parties are for this election. The BJP has fielded party workers as candidates while opposition parties that have fielded relatives as candidates,” BJP vice-president Vijay Bahadur Pathak said here on Monday. The BJP has given ticket for mayoral election to a common worker in Firozabad while the party’s city president has got the ticket from Varanasi. Social workers and doctors too got tickets. Tickets have been given to the state working committee member on one seat and the outgoing mayor on the other.
On the last day of nomination, the BJP candidates filed nomination for 10 mayoral seats. Sushma Kharakwal, member of the state executive of the BJP filed papers from Lucknow, Dr Manglesh Srivastav from Gorakhpur, Umesh Chandra Ganesh Kesarvani from Prayagraj, Ashok Tewari from Varanasi, Vinod Agarwal from Moradabad, Kamini Rathore from Firozabad, Hemlata Diwakar from Agra, Dr Ajay Kumar from Saharanpur, Vinod Agarwal from Mathura -Vrindavan and Bihari Lal Arya from Jhansi.
Protests rocked Congress offices where workers alleged that tickets were given to outsiders. Munna Singh, from Ayodhya, alleged that turncoats from BSP were given preference in the ticket distribution this time.
“The dedicated party workers were ignored and those people who are loyal to Nakul Dubey and Nassimmuddin Siddiqui were given tickets,” he alleged.
Similar complaints were received from Basti, Bijnore, Gorakhpur, Agra, Prayagraj and Moradabad.
Protests were also reported outside Samajwadi Party office in Lucknow. For unexpected reasons, the party leadership did not release the list of ward members. Instead, the candidates were called to the party office in Lucknow and were given tickets. Party workers allege that money has exchanged hands in distribution of tickets to ward corporator.
On the other hand, BJP is relying on CM Yogi Adityanath’s development oriented policy to win the civic elections. “We have a report card to show to the voters and we are carrying this to the voters,” Pathak said.
In the last six years of his government 2.61 lakh toilets have been built benefitting 10 crore people while the entire state has been declared open defecation free.
In urban areas, 8,99,634 individual and 69,381 public toilets were constructed while UP has received 20 awards in 2020 and 37 in 2021 in the cleanliness survey.
