The political fight for Uttar Pradesh began on Thursday with polling at 58 assembly seats spread across 11 districts in the western part of the state. Polling started at 7.00am and will continue till 6.00pm. The districts where the elections will be held are Shamli, Hapur, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura and Agra. The first phase will cover the Jat-dominant belt of western UP.
For BJP, the first phase will be crucial. Last time, the BJP bagged 53 of the 58 seats while the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party got two seats each. One seat went to the Rashtriya Lok Dal. The BJP cannot afford to lose a big margin this time around.
Law and order has been one of BJP's biggest planks in Western UP, which has seen its share of communal violence over the years. The SP-RLD alliance has centred their electioneering on farmers' issues and has attacked Adityanath over poll promises. BSP chief Mayawati, who started campaigning late, reminded people of her government's track record on law and order in the past. The Congress, under the leadership of its general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, embarked on door-to-door campaigns.
Home Minister Amit Shah's political messaging there focused on 'law and order' and 'ending appeasement', as he visited Kairana, notorious for its alleged "exodus of Hindus" before 2017. Shah visited the affected families who had since returned, as he began his door-to-door election campaign. Asserting that the people of Kairana were no longer living in fear, Shah said a satisfactory law and order situation is the primary condition for development and the Yogi Adityanath government has ensured this in Uttar Pradesh.
Shah had focused his campaign in Western Uttar Pradesh, the region which contributed the most to the protest over the recently repealed farm laws. Bhartiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait hails from this region. The choice of Kairana for Shah's first political programme in Uttar Pradesh after the assembly poll dates were announced is significant. In the run-up to the last assembly elections, the BJP had claimed that several Hindu families left Kairana after facing threats from criminals—an allegation contested by others. Adityanath had also invoked the alleged exodus during his recent visit to that town. "There was a time when riots used to happen here, youths were killed and there used to be curfew for days. There was a tendency to file one-sided cases. Now, due to the BJP government, there are no riots," Shah had said in December 2021.
Ministers whose fate would be decided in the first phase include Shrikant Sharma, Suresh Rana, Sandeep Singh, Kapil Dev Agarwal, Atul Garg and Chowdhury Lakshmi Narain.
-Inputs from PTI
