‘Party decides who fights from where’: Adityanath on contesting UP polls

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has said that he will contest the next year’s assembly elections if his party decides so. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader is currently a member of the UP Legislative Council.

“I have always contested elections and I will contest from wherever the party will say,” Adityanath said on Friday.

“The party has a parliamentary board and it decides who will contest from where,” he added.

Adityanath said the BJP government has done whatever the party promised in the run-up to the last assembly polls in 2017.

On the law and order situation, he said that the state has set an example and during the past over four years there was no riot and all festivals, including Diwali, were celebrated peacefully.

The remarks were made a day after BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh said the party wil fight the 2022 assembly polls under the leadership of Adityanath.

The assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh is among the crucial state polls for the BJP, which recently suffered a drubbing in party-ruled Himachal Pradesh, even losing the Mandi Lok Sabha seat, which is chief minister Jairam Thakur’s home turf.

The BJP is know to take tough decisions, and in case of other states like Gujarat and Uttarakhand – which will also go to polls in 2022 – it changed the chief ministers. While Bhupendra Patel replaced Vijay Rupani in Gujarat in September, Tirath Sigh Rawat was switched with Pushkar Singh Dhami in Uttarakhand in July.

The BJP has started preparations for UP months in advance. In October, the party’s central leadership held a crucial meeting with the Uttar Pradesh unit on next year’s assembly polls. The BJP leadership discussed the party’s election agenda for the coming 100 days and asked the state unit to reach out to the people with positive message.

The BJP has prepared a presentation listing out the welfare schemes that the government has initiated and needed to be conveyed to the voters.

The meeting – attended by BJP general secretary BL Santhosh, Uttar Pradesh in-charge Radha Mohan Singh, state chief Swantantra Dev Singh and Uttar Pradesh election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan – also discussed the allies who they will take along for the polls.

The schedule of Uttar Pradesh assembly elections is expected to be announced in January. The BJP came back to power in the state in the 2017 assembly polls bagging 312 seats. The party secured a 39.67 per cent vote share in the elections. The Samajwadi Party got 47 seats, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 19, and Congress managed 7 seats in the last assembly polls.