UP By-Elections: By-elections are to be held for 10 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh. However, the Election Commission has not yet announced the dates for the by-elections. Despite this, the political temperature in the state is rising.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which holds power in the state, and the Samajwadi Party appear to be facing off. Meetings between leaders of both parties are ongoing.
Meanwhile, a high-level BJP meeting is scheduled for Sunday, October 13, in Delhi, where discussions on various issues, including ticket distribution, are expected to take place.
According to sources, the BJP aims to recover from its losses in the Lok Sabha elections by winning the by-elections for the 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh.
The party does not want to leave any room for error in this regard, which is why a significant meeting has been called in Delhi on Sunday.
It is reported that party president JP Nadda and Amit Shah will be present at the meeting, along with UP BJP president Bhupendra Chaudhary, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and both Deputy Chief Ministers, Brajesh Pathak and Keshav Prasad Maurya.
The by-elections are set to take place in the assembly constituencies of Karhal, Milkipur, Katehri, Kundarki, Ghaziabad, Khair, Meerapur, Phoolpur, Majhawan, and Sisamau.
Among these seats, 5 are held by the Samajwadi Party, while RLD and the Nishad Party have one seat each, and the BJP currently holds 3 seats.
The 10 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, where by-elections are set to take place, present several challenges for the BJP on each front. After Akhilesh Yadav's Karhal, the next tough seat for the BJP is Kundarki in Moradabad. In the 2022 assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party's Ziaur Rahman was elected as the MLA from Kundarki. He was later elected as the MP from the Sambhal seat in the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP has only succeeded in Kundarki once, in 1993.
In this constituency, approximately 65% of the votes come from Muslim voters, while Hindu voters account for 35%.
Additionally, the Sisamau seat in Kanpur has become vacant due to the sentencing of Samajwadi Party MLA Irfan Solanki. This is one of the strongholds of the Samajwadi Party, and this time, the party may grant a ticket to someone from Irfan Solanki's family.
There is also visible sympathy for Irfan among the public, making this seat one of the challenging ones for the BJP.
