Congress will run in Ghaziabad with seat sharing with the SP in an attempt to replicate its 2004 triumph

Following the party’s Wednesday announcement of its Lok Sabha electoral alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress leaders in Ghaziabad are optimistic.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has long held Ghaziabad, one of the 17 seats that the Congress party will run for.

Raebareli, Amethi, Kanpur, Fatehpur Sikri, Bansgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Varanasi, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki, and Deoria are among the other seats that the Congress will run for.

According to party leaders who are aware of the alliance specifics, the SP and its other partners will run for the remaining 63 seats.

Given that Ghaziabad is a crucial seat in western Uttar Pradesh, Congressmen are optimistic. We want to replicate our 2004 victory, which saw our party win the seat, this time around. We expect that these elections will go lot more smoothly for the Congress together with the SP,” Congressman Bijender Yadav, the district president, said.

But the Ghaziabad parliamentary seat has traditionally been a BJP stronghold.

The districts of Ghaziabad and Hapur were included in the same parliamentary constituency until 2008. BJP MP Ramesh Chandra Tomar represented the seat four times, in 1991, 1996, 1998, and 1999.

The seat was won by Congress candidate Surendra Prakash Goel in 2004, while Rajnath Singh was elected as the MP of Ghaziabad in 2009. The BJP’s General VK Singh (retired), the current sitting MP, won the seat in 2014 and 2019.

By a record margin of 567,260 votes, General Singh beat Congress contender Raj Babbar in 2014. In 2019, the former army commander, running on a BJP ticket for the second term in a row, beat Samajwadi Party candidate and closest competitor, Suresh Bansal, by a margin of 501,500 votes.

“For over two months, our party organization has been preparing for the Lok Sabha election by arranging various outreach programs that include women, government scheme recipients, and other marginalized groups. We are optimistic that our candidate from Ghaziabad would prevail. We depend on our organization and hard work,” BJP city president Sanjeev Sharma said.

The SP’s city president, Virendra Yadav, did not answer calls.

However, leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said that the party may not declare its candidates in Uttar Pradesh.

“It’s because our leader, Sanjay Singh, who was actively employed in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested. We have requested seat sharing among the states from the Congress at the federal level. If that happens, we could back the Congress in Uttar Pradesh,” AAP district president Sachin Sharma said.