Lucknow: Within hours of the announcement of BJP’s first list for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, resentment has begun erupting in constituencies where “outsiders” have been given tickets and party workers have been ignored.
BJP workers burnt posters of party leaders in Kasganj district to protest against the allocation of tickets to members of one caste. The majority of BJP tickets in this district have been given to supporters of former chief minister, and Rajasthan governor, Kalyan Singh. In Aligarh’s Barauli constituency, protests are being staged against RLD rebel Dalveer Singh, who was given the BJP ticket barely a week after joining the party.
Former UP Congress spokesperson Thakur Dhirendra Singh and his supporters had joined the BJP on January 8 and he is now the BJP candidate from Jewar. BJP workers in Jewar have started protests against his nomination.
“We had conveyed our stand to the party’s top leaders, including state president Keshav Prasad Maurya, organisational secretary Sunil Bansal and party vice-president Om Mathur. We demanded that the ticket from Jewar should be given to a loyal party man and not a turncoat, but our plea has not been heard,” Thakur Harish Singh, former BJP president of Gautam Buddha Nagar district unit, said. The opposition from local BJP workers on Monday night also forced Guddu Pandit (Dibai constituency) and his brother Mukesh Sharma (Shikarpur constituency) to seek a return to the Samajwadi Party from where they had crossed over to the BJP in June 2016. The Samajwadi Party, however, did nto open its doors for the brothers, and chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, now also SP chief, refused to meet them. Protests were also reported from Agra when Rani Pakshkalika Singh, who joined the BJP last week, was named as candidate from Bah constituency.
