NEW DELHI: The BJP on Tuesday released its third list of candidates for the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, which included former heavyweight BSP leaders – Swamy Prasad Maurya and Dara Singh Chouhan.
Announcing the list of candidates, BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said that Maurya will contest the upcoming Assembly elections from his traditional seat Padrauna.
Incidentally, Maurya was the top confidante of BSP supremo Mayawati and had defected to the BJP last year. Sources said that Maurya also succeeded in bagging BJP party tickets for a few of his supporters.
The BJP has also nominated the former leader of the BSP in the Lok Sabha Dara Singh Chouhan from the Madhuban Assembly constituency. Chouhan, incidentally is the BJP’s OBC wings national chief.
He was appointed to the position by BJP chief Amit Shah last month. The BJP has also fielded Kanhaiya Lal, leader of the Rashtriya Mahagantra party, while Singh said that the seats to be allocated to the Anupriya Patel headed Apna Dal and the Bhartiya Samaj Party are yet to be decided. The BJP has so far finalised 370 candidates out of the total 403 in UP.
The BJP has also nominated former state unit chief Surya Pratap Shahi from the Pathardeva Assembly constituency. The BJP in its third list has also repeated its sitting MLAs.
The third list of the BJP was in line with the current trend of the party to reach out to the upper castes and the non-Yadav OBCs in its bid to script a winnable social engineering for the state.
The BJP has also sought through ticket distribution to reach out to the non-Jatav Dalit castes in its bid to further broaden caste equations.
The BJP in its three lists released so far has not shied away from feting the turncoats and nominating family members of party leaders to ensure that there is no faction-fighting in the poll-bound state.
The BJP this week is likely to release its final list of candidates, as the first phase of polling is slated for February 11.