NEW DELHI: BJP president J P Nadda on Wednesday announced the saffron camp’s alliance with Nishad Party and Apna Dal in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, stating that the NDA will contest all 403 seats in the state. He, however, didn’t divulge specific seat adjustments with the two smaller parties. The BJP has so far announced candidates for 109 Assembly constituencies.
The BJP chief along with Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah held extensive deliberations with NDA leaders from the Hindi heartland state, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, at the party headquarters to shortlist candidates for the remaining seats.
“The three constituents of the NDA in UP — the BJP, Apna Dal and Nishad Party — will contest 403 Assembly seats,” said Nadda, flanked by the leaders of the two alliance partners — Sanjay Nishad and Union Minister Anupriya Patel.
On the number of seats allotted to the alliance parties, Nadda said the details will be announced in due course. With the BJP finalising candidates for all remaining seats, the party is likely to announce the number of seats allotted to Apna Dal and Nishad Party. It is, however, learnt that both the parties will get to field around 15 candidates each, with a few on the BJP symbol.
Speaking from dais in the presence of Nadda and Dharmendra Pradhan, Nishad said his party has been raising the issues concerning his community and the government has addressed some of them and the others will be taken care of after the UP elections. Patel on the other hand said her party has always been raising the issues concerning the backward castes, including creating a separate ministry at the Centre.
Both Nishad and Patel hailed PM Modi and the UP CM for taking a host of measures for the backward castes.