LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP president Pankaj Choudhary on Sunday dismissed reports that the state leadership had prepared and sent a list of 209 candidates for the forthcoming Assembly elections to the party’s central leadership.
In a formal press release signed jointly by Choudhary and CM Yogi Adityanath, the party described the claims as “completely false, baseless, imaginary and fabricated.”
The two leaders asserted that neither the state unit nor any provincial leadership body has drawn up or transmitted any such candidate list.
The BJP emphasised that it is a disciplined, cadre-based organisation that follows a “well-structured, democratic and fully organisational process” for the selection of candidates in Assembly or any other election.
That process, they underlined, “has not even begun at present.”
The party leaders characterised the circulating narrative as a deliberate and misleading campaign. They suggested that certain elements were seeking to create “discord, confusion and fear” among dedicated party workers by spreading an unfounded rumour.
The leadership appealed to all office-bearers, workers and the general public to disregard such factless and deceptive reports and to treat only communications issued through authorised party channels as authentic.
The denial comes amid early speculation about ticket distribution ahead of state polls. With 403 seats in the Vidhan Sabha, any purported shortlist of 209 names would have represented roughly half the House, making the claim politically significant.
Party sources familiar with BJP’s internal functioning have long maintained that candidate selection typically involves multiple layers of feedback from booth-level committees, district units, the state election committee and, finally, the central parliamentary board. No formal exercise of that nature has been initiated, according to the official release.
Their joint statement, sources said, is intended to reassure the rank and file and to shut down unofficial lists that often surface in the months preceding major elections.
