Sonia Gandhi suffered a substantial support base loss in Rae Bareilly at the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
New Delhi: The second list of candidates for Uttar Pradesh released by BJP includes Aditi Singh from the prestigious seat of the Rae Bareli assembly. The announcement also said Nitin Aggarwal would contest from Hardoi seat, another politically important segment. The second list has the names of 85 candidates. 'Rebel' Congress legislator Aditi Singh deserted the grand old party and joined BJP in November last year. In the list, BJP has fielded 15 women among 85 candidates.
In 2017, Aditi Singh had won Rae Bareilly's assembly seat on Congress ticket. This is a politically crucial segment as it falls under Rae Bareilly parliamentary constituency, a bastion of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. In 2012 assembly polls, the Rae Bareilly seat was won by Ms Aditi Singh's father, Akhilesh Singh. He had contested the polls on a Peace Party ticket. Akhilesh Kumar Singh has been a Congress old hand in the area and has been winning the seat for Congress consecutively in 1996, 2002 and 2007. In 2017,2017, his daughter Aditi Singh had won the seat on a Congress ticket. But she was suspended in 2020 by the Congress party.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP nominee Smriti Irani had defeated the then Congress chief Rahul Gandhi from Amethi. Sonia Gandhi, too, had suffered a substantial loss of support base in Rae Bareilly at the Lok Sabha polls (2019). Though she could retain the seat, BJP's Dinesh Pratap Singh had polled over 3,67,000 votes recording an upswing of about 17 per cent of vote share for his party. Sonia Gandhi had suffered negative voting of an estimated 8 per cent as compared to her performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Among others, the BJP has decided to field Aseem Arun, a former IPS officer, from the Kannauj assembly seat. He had taken voluntary retirement recently.
From Hathras, the BJP has fielded Anjula Mahor and Devendra Singh Lodhi from Kasganj. From Etah, the BJP nominee is Vipin Verma David, and Sanjay Gangwar will contest from Pilibhit. David and Gangwar won the respective seats in 2017 as well.
Meanwhile, the party on Friday launched the 'theme song' for the Uttar Pradesh polls. The line of the song is "…. UP phir mangey BJP sarkar, soch imandar, kaam imandar". Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the theme song reflects a good collection of BJP's works in the last five years.
