Mission 370: Today, the PM launches the UP campaign from Meerut

The ruling BJP has selected actor Arun Govil, best known for portraying Lord Rama in Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayan,” which was broadcast on Doordarshan in the late 1980s, to represent the party in the Lok Sabha election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the campaign on Sunday in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which is considered to be the bellwether.

The PM chose western Uttar Pradesh as the starting point for the state’s canvassing effort, which is noteworthy since the BJP’s performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha in this crucial district fell short of the party’s expectations.

In 2014, the saffron forces had won all but nine of the western UP’s Lok Sabha seats. However, in 2019, the BSP and the SP made gains, and a strong BSP-SP-RLD combination hurt the BJP in this region by taking away votes from Muslims as well as some SC, Jat, and OBC votes.

Of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP had won 62, the BSP 10, and the SP 5. The BJP  won 71 seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2014.

In a House of 543 MPs, the BJP’s ambitious 370+ seat aim this season depends on a strong UP victory. The party thinks new coalition arrangements would increase its tally in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most MPs to the Lok Sabha.

The BSP is fighting alone in the impending vote, the RLD is aligned with the NDA, and the SP is facing a mutiny over the allocation of tickets in the area.

Additionally subtle is the PM’s decision to hold the UP campaign kickoff rally at Meerut. This area, which is located in western Uttar Pradesh, will mostly poll during the first two phases and set trends either favorably or unfavorably for the competing parties.

The Prime Minister would be making his speech barely one day after the late Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh was awarded India’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, by President Droupadi Murmu.

On behalf of the late Jat icon, who was born into a peasant family in Meerut’s Noorpur village—the city where the PM will sound the BJP’s UP campaign trumpet on Sunday—Rashtriya Lok Dal head Jayant Chaudhary accepted the award on Saturday.

Significantly, in 1937, Chaudhary Charan Singh was elected for the first time from the Ghaziabad-Baghpat seat in the Meerut district to the Legislative Assembly of the United Province (Uttar Pradesh). His legacy continues to inspire the farmers and the Jat community across western Uttar Pradesh.

Jayant Chaudhary will be with the Prime Minister when he speaks at the rally on Sunday, demonstrating his political support for the powerful Jat community in western Uttar Pradesh.

With an overall strong showing elsewhere, the PM’s rally aims to improve saffron chances across the belt, where the party did not do well in the 2022 UP elections.

The BJP won 77 out of 113 seats in the Jat region of west Uttar Pradesh in 2022, compared to 99 in 2017.

Riding the tide of farmer protest, the SP and the RLD, the BJP’s main adversaries in 2022, together won 36 of these 113 segments as opposed to just 18 in 2017. Eight of these 36 seats were won by the RLD in 2022, giving it a partial reprieve in the area. In the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly in 2017, there was only one MLA from the RLD.

However, the Jats united in 2022 behind Jayant Chaudhary, the leader of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, who is now a member of the BJP.

The BJP-held seat of Meerut in the outgoing Lok Sabha will be put to vote in the second round of elections on April 26. The electorate in nearby seats like Amroha, where former BSP leader Danish Ali is the current MP, Moradabad, where the SP’s ST Hassan is the sitting MP, and Ghaziabad, where the BJP has dropped Union Minister and current MP VK Singh to address anti-incumbency this year, are anticipated to be impacted by the PM’s presence. In the first two phases on April 19 and 26, most of the LS seats in the western UP will be polled.

There are 8 places available in the first round.

On April 19, eight UP segments will conduct polling in the first round. Among these, the BSP has three (Saharanpur, Bijnor, and Nagina-SC); the BJP has four (Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Pilibhit, and Rampur); and the SP has one (Moradabad).
Top leaders will attend INDIA bloc rally today. Of the eight UP segments that will vote in the second phase on April 26, the BJP has seven (Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar, Gautam Budh Nagar, Aligarh, and Mathura).

Leading figures from the INDIA bloc, including as Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Bhagwant Mann, Akhilesh Yadav, and Tejashwi Yadav, will take part in a rally on Sunday at the Ramlila Ground in New Delhi. In light of Arvind Kejriwal’s imprisonment, the demonstration is seen as an expression of opposition unity.

“We’ll battle this together”

New Delhi: Sunita Kejriwal, the wife of Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal, received support from Kalpana Soren, the wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who was imprisoned in a money laundering case.