Lucknow Diary: Two Bareilly seats and saffron dispute

Problem with saffron over two Bareilly seats

The BJP is putting off making a decision on the Bareilly seat since it seems to be undecided about the other two division seats, Varun Gandhi’s Pilibhit and Dr. Sanghmitra Maurya’s Badaun. According to political rumors, Varun Gandhi, the incumbent MP from Pilibhit, is not expected to get a ticket since, during the last three years, he has not missed an opportunity to criticize Prime Minister Modi and CM Yogi of Uttar Pradesh. The Pilibhit MP’s hostile behavior has reportedly subsided during the last three months, but his destiny has reportedly already been determined by upper management and will be revealed soon.

INDIA bloc allies are still debating seat-sharing.

The road ahead for SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is not going to be easy, as the Communist Party of India (CPI), another part of the INDIA bloc, has proposed to contest on six Lok Sabha seats in UP in the upcoming battle of the ballots. This is in addition to sealing the deal of 17 seats with Congress and keeping the remaining 63 for itself and smaller allies. The CPI has designated the following seats: Dhaurahra, Robertsganj (SC), Shahjahanpur (SC), Banda, Ghosi, Ghazipur, and Ghosi. In the meanwhile, those seats have already been divided between the Congress and the SP.

Cautious parties establish committees for cooperation.

Prior to finalising the seat-sharing agreement with the Congress, the Samajwadi Party led the charge in declaring the Lok Sabha candidates and quickly announced around thirty-two names. However, the party is now being very careful and holding its cards close to the vest. Comparably, the Congress has not yet opened the UP card, despite having produced two lists with more than forty candidates each. This has prolonged the wait for the Amethi and Rae Bareli seats, where party cadres are calling for the candidacies of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, respectively. In order to guarantee that the parties understood each other, leaders devised a plan to establish many tiers of coordination panels.