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HomePoliticsTwo-year headstart: BJP begins campaign to snatch Rae Bareli, Amethi, & Kannauj

Two-year headstart: BJP begins campaign to snatch Rae Bareli, Amethi, & Kannauj

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Riding high on its resounding victory in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the BJP has formulated a strategy to deal its rivals a deadly blow in 2019 by snatching three high-profile Lok Sabha seats – Amethi, Rae Bareli, and Kannauj.

BJP strategists told ThePrint that the party believes the timing is right for it to target the three constituencies represented by the top leadership of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party. Amethi is represented by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Rae Bareli by his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The two seats have been a bastion of the first family of the main opposition party.

Kannauj is represented by Dimple Yadav, wife of Samajwadi Party chief and previous CM Akhilesh Yadav. The BJP believes it can capitalize on both its rivals’ weakness following the assembly election sweep and win these three highly symbolic constituencies.

To start with, the party has drafted a special strategy for each of the three seats. To supplement this, party workers on the ground in each district are receiving consistent support and guidance from the party’s national leadership.

A major component of this newly strategy will be frequent visits from BJP national and state leaders. The BJP plans to send one state minister to visit Amethi and Rae Bareli every week to work on an issue related to public welfare. Additionally, one central minister will visit each of the three the constituencies every month.

This month, on 28 August, minister of state for human resources, Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, plans to visit Rae Bareli and meet block level workers. Dilip Yadav, BJP district president for Rae Bareli, said that “on that day, several workers from other parties, including Congress, will join the BJP because of Pandey’s presence”.

Earlier this year, the BJP won three of six assembly seats in Rae Bareli compared to only two for the Congress and one for the Samajwadi Party. According to Yadav, “the two Congress MLAs are also in touch with our central leadership and are likely to join us in the coming days.”

“The party will field a senior leader from Rae Bareli to make the contest tougher for the Congress,” he added.

Amethi, by contrast, has five assembly seats, of which the BJP won four. The district will receive special attention from union minister Smriti Irani, who lost her last election there in 2014. Irani plans to inaugurate several development projects in the region this September, adding to her successful launch of an FM radio station originally announced by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi under the UPA government.

“Workers from Congress and Samajwadi party are regularly joining us,” said Uma Shankar Pandey, the Amethi district BJP president. “There is a lot of anger in the people against Rahul Gandhi who hasn’t visited the constituency for the last six months.”

“People have started putting out his missing posters in Amethi, which never happened before. In 2019, we will cover the gap of over one lakh votes and register a victory here,” he said.

Kannauj has been a family seat for the Samajwadi Party for the past 18 years, electing Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav and now Dimple Yadav. Still, the BJP believes that after winning four of the constituency’s six assembly seats in March, it can wrest the seat from the SP in 2019.

“We lost in 2014 only because it was not our government,” said Subrata Pathak, the state president of the BJP’s youth wing, the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha, who was the party’s candidate in Kannauj last cycle. “This time it is our government both at the national and state levels.”

The BJP has put union minister Narendra Singh Tomar in charge of Kannauj as he already visits the constituency frequently.

“In the coming days, the frequency of (Tomar’s) visits (to Kannauj) is going to increase, in addition to state ministers making regular visits,” said Pathak. “We are working to establish direct connections between the ground level workers and the top party leadership. Even a booth worker can directly call senior leaders and give his ideas.”

But despite the BJP’s ambitious play for Dimple Yadav’s seat, the SP’s MLC in charge of the district, Ram Briksh Yadav, is unperturbed.

“They are trying hard for quite some time to win Kannauj but they have failed,” he said. “Akhilesh Yadav has a personal relation with each and every family of Kannauj and they all love him. Whatever has happened in Kannauj is all because of Akhilesh-ji and not the BJP.”

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