Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party has formally announced that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will contest the upcoming assembly polls in the state from the Gorakhpur Constituency.
The ruling BJP released its first list of candidates on January 15. Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan held a press conference where he said that the saffron party have released a list of candidates for 57 out of 58 seats in the first phase and for 48 out of 55 in the second phase.
He also confirmed that CM Yogi will contest the elections from the Gorakhpur seat and deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya will contest from Sirathu assembly segment.
Earlier, it had been speculated that the UP CM would contest from the Ayodhya seat, but this rumour never really materialized.
It is to be noted that Yogi Adityanath had been a member of Parliament (MP) from the Gorakhpur Parliamentary constituency for five consecutive terms since 1998.
The battle for UP has intensified in recent days. The principal opposition, the Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav had conducted a bus "yatra" recently where he was seen interacting with the media and it drew massive crowds, especially the youth.
On the other hand, the Congress Party led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has been working hard to make their presence felt. Priyanka has come up with a slogan called "Ladki Hu, Lar Sakti Hu."
She had earlier announced the party's decision to give 40 per cent seats to women and had pushed for the induction of more women into politics.
Meanwhile, the ruling party is in the midst of an exodus from its own party members. Some of their sitting Ministers and MLA's have resigned from the party and jumped ship to join the SP just ahead of the elections.
In the previous election held in 2017, the BJP scored a sweeping victory by winning 312 assembly seats out of the total 403 seats in the UP Legislative assembly. It was followed by SP who won 47 seats while the BSP managed to win just 19 seats.
The polls will be held in seven phases from 10 February to 7 March. The polling will be conducted on February 10,14,20,23,27 and March 3 and 7 respectively. The results will be declared on 10 March.
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