UP Mayoral Elections: BJP Releases 2nd Candidate List, Check Who's Been Dropped & Surprise Additions

In a bid to tackle the arising anti-incumbency in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh mayoral elections, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now placing its bet on new contenders by replacing all the old ones except for the sitting mayors.

Of the 17 mayoral candidates, the party will give tickets only to mayors in Bareilly, Kanpur, and Moradabad, where the contenders are continuing.

The saffron party on Sunday announced the list of its candidates, some of which were unexpected nominations.

The party named  Archana Verma, who joined the BJP after defecting from the Samajwadi Party just hours before her nomination, its candidate from Shahjahanpur Municipal Corporation. Her nomination came as a shock to party workers.

Another shocking omission from the list was Rishikesh Upadhyay, the sitting mayor of Ayodhya. Earlier, the BJP dropped Abhilasha Gupta, the outgoing mayor of Prayagraj and wife of state government minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi. Gupta, who was seeking her third term as mayor, was replaced by Umesh Chandra Kesarwani.

On Sunday, Chaudhary announced the names of the mayoral candidates of the seven municipal corporations for the second phase of elections. The party fielded Girishpati Tripathi from Ayodhya, Pramila Pandey from Kanpur, Sunita Dayal from Ghaziabad, Prashant Singhal from Aligarh, and Umesh Gautam from Bareilly.

Girishpati Tripathi is the Mahant of a temple in Ayodhya.

The candidate list for the first phase of the polls featured Sushma Khadakwal from Lucknow, Manglesh Srivastava from Gorakhpur, Ashok Tiwari from Varanasi, Vinod Agarwal from Moradabad, Kamini Rathore from Firozabad, Hemlata Diwakar from Agra, Ajay Kumar from Saharanpur, Vinod Kumar Agarwal from Mathura-Vrindavan, and Bihari Lal Arya from Jhansi.

The urban local body elections in the state will be held in two phases on May 4 and May 11. The counting of votes will take place on May 13.

(With PTI inputs)

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