Staying ahead of the opposition parties, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has started preparations for the urban local body elections.
The BJP has appointed conveners for urban local body polls and election in-charge for each of the 17 nagar nigams.
The BJP has drafted ministers and senior office-bearers of the party for the urban local body elections. In appointing the election in-charges for 17 mayoral seats, the BJP has taken care for maintaining a fine balance between the government and the organisation.
For each mayoral seat, along with a cabinet minister, a senior leader from the party organisation has been appointed as co-in-charge for the elections.
BJP state president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, after several days’ exercise, has approved the list of in-charges for these elections.
The convener for each mayoral seat is from the same district while the co convener is from a different district.
The ruling party has set the ambitious target of winning all 17 mayoral seats of municipal corporations. The BJP has already announced another ambitious target of winning all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2024.
The BJP has chalked out the strategy for winning all 17 mayoral seats. Though the urban elections make no impact on the stability of the state government, these elections do create an environment and give a clear indication about the popularity of the incumbent government.
The BJP, for organisational purpose, has divided the urban areas into three regions -- Western UP, Awadh and Gorakhpur. The mayoral seats in Western UP region are Ghaziabad, Meerut, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Mathura-Vrindavan, Agra, Firozabad, Aligarh, Shahjahanpur, Bareilly, Kanpur, and Jhansi. The seats in Awadh region are Lucknow, Ayodhya, Prayagraj and Varanasi and Gorakhpur.
Former minister Mahendra Singh is election in-charge of Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam, BJP state vice president Pankaj Singh of Meerut, minister of state Aseem Arun of Saharanpur, MLA Purushottam Khandelwal of Moradabad, former minister Ramnaresh Agnihotri of Mathura-Vrindavan, Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak of Agra, minister Dharmapal Singh of Firozabad, minister Jaiveer Singh of Aligarh, minister of state Kapil Dev Agarwal of Shahjahanpur, minister Lakshmi Naryan Chaudhary of Bareilly, minister Swatantra Dev Singh of Kanpur Nagar, minister Baby Rani Maurya of Jhansi, minister Suresh Khanna of Lucknow, minister Surya Pratap Shahi of Ayodhya, minister Jatin Prasada of Prayagraj, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya of Varanasi and minister of state Arun Saxena of Gorakhpur.
