LUCKNOW: Akash Anand, the political heir apparent to BSP President Mayawati, will start his poll campaign from Nagina on April 6 and end at Kanpur on May 1 in Uttar Pradesh.
This will be the first time in UP that Anand will independently campaign for BSP candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.
According to party sources, he will address a public meeting each at Khurja, covering the Gautam Buddha Nagar and Bulandshahr seats and Sahibabad in Ghaziabad constituency. His meetings will also be held in Bareilly, Mathura, Agra, Aligarh, Hathras and Saharanpur in west UP.
After April 24, he will tour east UP and address election meetings in Basti, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Varanasi and Ambedkar Nagar.
Anand’s meetings have also been planned in Prayagraj, Mirzapur, Ayodhya, Devipatan, Jhansi, Chitrakoot and Kanpur divisions.
In Lucknow division, he will address meetings in Sitapur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Hardoi, Lucknow, Mohanlalganj, Raebareli and Unnao.
In the current elections, BSP has declared candidates for 25 parliamentary seats in UP. Barring Aligarh, the party has declared candidates for the rest of the seven districts that go to polls in the second phase on April 26.
The districts where voting will be held in the first phase are Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina (SC), Moradabad, Rampur and Pilibhit.
In the second phase, polling will be held in Amroha, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar, Bulandshahr (SC), Mathura and Aligarh.
In 2019, BSP had sent four MPs to Lok Sabha from 16 of these west UP districts.
The Saharanpur seat was won by Haji Fazlur Rahman, Bijnor by Malook Nagar, Nagina by Girish Chandra Jatav and Amroha by Kunwar Danish Ali.
Danish Ali has now joined Congress, while Rahman and Nagar have not been repeated by the party. Jatav is in the fray from Bulandshahr this time.
After Mayawati announced her decision to go solo, the party has another set of challenges to face this time than in 2019, when it polled over 19.4 per cent votes which was the second highest vote share after BJP.
BSP contested 38 seats in alliance with SP and RLD. It consolidated Muslim, Dalit and OBC votes in west UP seats to an extent that BSP won four and SP three seats in the region. Though RLD drew a blank, the alliance won 15 seats together.
This time the dynamics have changed. After snapping ties with SP, the BSP wants to retain its base among Jatavs, most of whom are concentrated in west UP.
Akash’s appointment as Mayawati’s successor was a move aimed at convincing Jatavs that the party is here to stay and belongs to them. His campaign will also counter the influence of Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Aazad whose popularity among Dalit youths is a major cause of concern for the BSP.