BJP resolves to regain lost ground in UP through by elections

Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh has decided to regain lost ground by winning the 10 assembly seats where by-elections are to be held in the coming months.

These seats are those that will be vacated due to the resignations of those legislators who have been elected to the Lok Sabha in the just concluded elections.

The seats that will fall vacant are Karhal in Mainpuri (Akhilesh Yadav), Awadhesh Prasad (Ayodhya), Lalji Varma (Ambedkar Nagar), Zia-ur-Rehman Barq (Moradabad). All these seats are held by the Samajwadi Party.

The seats where by-elections will be held and are presently held by BJP include Anoop Valmiki (Aligarh), Atul Garg (Ghaziabad), Parveen Patel (Phulpur) and Vinod Kumar Bind (Mirzapur).

By-elections will also be held in the Meerapur assembly seat since the MLA from here, Chandan Chauhan has been elected to Lok Sabha on RLD symbol.

UP minister Jitin Prasada, who won from the Pilibhit seat, was a member of the Legislative Council and he has sent his resignation. By-elections will also be held for his seat in the Upper House.

The sword is also dangling on the heads of six SP MLAs who cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha elections earlier this year in February.

They include Manoj Pandey (Raebareli), Rakesh Pandey (Ambedkar Nagar), Abhay Singh (Faizabad), Rakesh Pratap Singh (Amethi), Vinod Chaturvedi (Jalaun), Puja Pal (Kaushambhi),

The Samajwadi Party which recorded a win with 37 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, is in no mood to forgive these rebel MLAs. SP President Akhilesh Yadav has made it clear that action will be initiated against them ‘soon’.

If the SP moves disqualification petition against these rebel MLAs and the Speaker disqualifies them, by-elections will be held on their six seats as well.

A senior BJP functionary told IANS on Wednesday, “We have already started preparing for by-elections without wasting any time. We have learnt lessons from the Lok Sabha polls and we will make sure that we win back the seats in the by-elections. The process of shortlisting candidates is already about to begin.”

The Samajwadi spokesman, on the other hand, said, that the voters had already taught the rebel MLAs a lesson and the SP had won in their respective constituencies.

“The by-elections will further consolidate the INDIA bloc position in the UP assembly,” he said.