UP polls: BJP allies with Nishad Party & Apna Dal, to contest under PM & CM's leadership

In a big announcement on Friday, BJP formally declared its tie-up with Nishad Party for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election due early next year. This comes after Sanjay Nishad held a series of meetings with the central leadership ostensibly to discuss issues such as fishing rights, Patta allotment rights and reservation for the Nishad community. Though the Nishad Party won UP CM Yogi Adityanath's pocket borough Gorakhpur in the 2018 Lok Sabha by-elections with the support of the Samajwadi Party, it stitched an alliance with BJP a year later.

In the 2019 General Election, Sanjay Nishad's son Praveen Kumar Nishad contested on a BJP ticket and emerged victorious from the Sant Kabir Nagar constituency. Addressing a press briefing, UP BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh said, "The two parties will contest the 2022 polls together with full strength under the leadership of Honourable Yogi Ji and Honourable Modi Ji. We will go ahead with the strength of the party workers and the path of development. The lotus will bloom in the state again under the leadership of Sanjay Nishad and BJP and its workers. BJP will again form the government to serve the poor".

Flanked by Sanjay Nishad, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan revealed that Apna Dal (S) will also be a part of the BJP-led alliance for the upcoming Assembly polls. At present, Apna Dal (S) president Anupriya Patel is the president of Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. He also exuded confidence in farmers backing BJP citing the government's commitment to double farmers’ income.

UP polls

In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, BJP won a whopping 312 seats in the 403-member House, whereas BSP could win only 19 seats. On the other hand, the SP-Congress alliance failed to bear fruit as it could win in only 54 constituencies. While this was seen as a mandate for PM Modi as BJP had not declared any CM candidate, Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath was a surprise pick for the post. 

Though some BJP leaders made conflicting statements over Adityanath's future as the Chief Minister, PM Modi put rest to all speculations by lauding UP's governance model during his successive visits to the state in the last three months. Leaving no stone unturned for the 2022 Assembly election, BJP appointed Dharmendra Pradhan as its election in-charge and Anurag Thakur, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Shobha Karandlaje, Annapurna Devi, Saroj Pandey and Vivek Thakur as the co-in-charges. Meanwhile,  Sanjay Bhatia, Sanjeev Chaurasiya, Y Satya Kumar, Sudhir Gupta, Arvind Menon and Sunil Oza as the organizational in-charges of Western UP, Braj, Awadh, Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Kashi.