Battleground UP: BJP releases list of 91, drops 17 sitting MLA, repeats Ayodhya legislator

New Delhi, January 28

The Bharatiya Janata Party released a list of 91 candidates for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls on Friday, dropping around 17 sitting MLAs while retaining the sitting legislator in key constituency Ayodhya, Ved Prakash Gupta.

Meanwhile, the party has repeated several ministers, including Siddharth Nath Singh from Allahabad West and Nand Kumar Gupta ‘Nandi’ from Allahabad South. Among those dropped include Co-Operative Affairs Minister Mukut Bihari Verma. His son Gaurav Verma has been fielded from his Kaiserganj seat in Bahraich.

The BJP has also fielded Chief Minister Adityanath’s media adviser Shalabh Mani Tripathi from Deoria.

With this, the BJP has announced the names of 295 candidates for the 403-member Assembly The party has also given tickets to nine women candidates in the list released on Friday, including Sindhuja Mishra (Kunda), Neelam Karwariya (Meja), Aarti Kol (Karaon), Aarti Tiwari (Goshainganj), Saroj Sonkar (Balha), Anupama Jaiswal (Bahraich), Neelam Sonkar (lalganj), Manju Sonkar (Mehnagar) and Sunita Parishit Singh (Zamania).

The Central Election Committee (CEC) has finalised almost all candidates for all the remaining seats of Uttar Pradesh, say sources, adding that the names will be announced over the next few days.