Political Parties in Uttar Pradesh have begun gearing up for the upcoming civic polls focusing on door-to-door campaigning. The polls are scheduled to be held in November and December. However, the polls will examine the poll preliminaries of the parties and allow them to prove their mettle in the 2024 general elections.
According to the government, there are 438 Nagar Panchayats, 199 Nagar Palika Parishads and 17 Municipal Corporations in Uttar Pradesh. BJP had won 14 of the 16 mayoral seats when the last elections to the urban bodies were held in October – November 2017. At the same time, the BSP acquired two from Aligarh and Meerut, respectively. Later, Shahjahanpur was also given the status of Municipal Corporation, due to which the total count of municipal corporations in the state increased to 17.
State media in-charge Manish Dixit said that the ruling party, BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party), has set its eyes on attaining all 80 seats in the state in the upcoming 2024 elections. He also stated, “We are taking the urban body elections very seriously and treating them on par with the general elections. A meeting of the in-charges and co in-charges of every urban body of the state was held on Saturday to prepare an action plan”.
BJP’s state president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, state in-charge Radha Mohan Singh and organization general secretary Dharampal had newly organized a strategy for the elections at a virtual meeting with the party’s district presidents, district in-charges and conveners of civic polls.
National spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said the primary goal of the main opposition party, Samajwadi Party (SP), will be on ground-level management. SP president Akhilesh Yadav was appointed the in-charges in all municipal areas about two months ago and had been working at the ground level to win these elections.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which was demolished in the previous assembly polls, winning just one seat in the 403-member state assembly, is keen to make a strong resurgence through the urban body elections. As part of the ‘Har Ghar Dastak’ campaign, the party will take the principles of Bhimrao Ambedkar, BSP founder Kanshi Ram and other Dalit leaders to the people, a leader said. “We launched a membership drive on June 1. Now, we are focusing on connecting the people with the BSP’s ideology, and several other campaigns will be launched soon,” he said.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) will use the same strategy with which it achieved electoral success in Delhi and Punjab in the civic polls in Uttar Pradesh. Party’s state spokesperson Vaibhav Maheshwari said the AAP had started selecting mohalla in-charges in the state.
The party has also equipped a mobile application to report the problems of the mohallas. Through this application, the party will get information about significant issues of every locality, and based on them, and the election manifesto will be issued for every locality.
