UP Mayor Election: BJP Relies On Fresh Faces, Shows Exit Door To Several Sitting Mayors

In the UP Mayor polls, the BJP is betting heavy on new candidates to fend off anti-incumbency. Of the 17 mayoral candidates, the party has repeated sitting mayors in Bareilly, Kanpur, and Moradabad.

In the UP Mayor polls, the BJP is betting heavy on new candidates to fend off anti-incumbency.

Source : ANI

In a bid to fend off anti-incumbency in the upcoming mayoral elections in Uttar Pradesh, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is betting heavy on new candidates. Of the 17 mayoral candidates, the party has repeated sitting mayors only in Bareilly, Kanpur, and Moradabad, as reported by the news agency PTI. BJP on Sunday announced Archana Verma as its Shahjahanpur Municipal Corporation, just about four hours after she joined the party, defecting from the Samajwadi Party.

According to PTI, Archana Verma, SP's declared mayoral candidate from Shahjahanpur, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday and soon after, her name figured in the list of mayoral candidates.

Addressing the media, Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak spoke about her joining and said that Archana's father-in-law Ramamurthy Verma was a four-time MLA (three times from Shahjahanpur's Jalalabad constituency and once from Dadraul). He was also a one-time MP from Shahjahanpur (1996), as reported by PTI. The saffron party omitted the name of Rishikesh Upadhyay, who is a sitting mayor of Ayodhya from the list of seven names in the second phase of polling.

Earlier, the BJP dropped Abhilasha Gupta, the outgoing mayor of Prayagraj and wife of state government minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi. Gupta, who was seeking her third term as mayor, was replaced by Umesh Chandra Kesarwani.

Chaudhary on Sunday announced the names of the mayoral candidates of the seven municipal corporations for the second phase of elections, fielding Archana Verma from Shahjahanpur, Girishpati Tripathi from Ayodhya, Pramila Pandey from Kanpur, Sunita Dayal from Ghaziabad, Prashant Singhal from Aligarh, and Umesh Gautam from Bareilly, as reported by PTI. Girishpati Tripathi is the mahant of a temple in Ayodhya.

The BJP has given a second chance to Umesh Gautam and Pramila Pandey, both outgoing mayors, from the unreserved Bareilly seat and Kanpur Municipal Corporation, respectively. BJP released the list of 10 mayoral candidates for the first phase of civic body polls on April 16. BJP had repeated Moradabad mayor Vinod Agarwal, fielding fresh faces in the remaining nine municipal corporations.

The party in its list of names for the first phase of the polls, had replaced Lucknow Mayor Sanyukta Bhatia with state executive member Sushma Khadakwal.

The party fielded Manglesh Srivastava from Gorakhpur and Ashok Tiwari from Varanasi, Vinod Agarwal from Moradabad, Kamini Rathore from Firozabad, Hemlata Diwakar from Agra, Ajay Kumar from Saharanpur, Vinod Kumar Agarwal from Mathura-Vrindavan, and Bihari Lal Arya from Jhansi.

The urban local body elections in the state will be held in two phases on May 4 and May 11. The counting of votes will take place on May 13. Thirty-seven districts of Saharanpur, Moradabad, Agra, Jhansi, Prayagraj, Lucknow, Devipatan, Gorakhpur, and Varanasi divisions will go to polls in the first phase, while polls in the 38 districts of Meerut, Bareilly, Aligarh, Kanpur, Chitrakoot, Ayodhya, Basti, Azamgarh, and Mirzapur divisions will be held in the second phase.