New BJP panel in Lucknow today to prepare blueprint

The team will hold discussions with top leaders, including chief minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma

LUCKNOW : The new election panel appointed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh would arrive in Lucknow on Wednesday to finalise the blueprint for the assembly polls in consultation with top leaders in the party and the government.

The election panel is headed by Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a prominent OBC face of the party, who has been party’s election in-charge of other states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh.

He would be accompanied by seven co-in-charges for UP, including minister for information and broadcasting Anurag Thakur; minister of state for parliamentary affairs Arjun Meghwal; minister of state for agriculture and farmers welfare Shobha Karandlaje; minister of state for education Annpurna Devi; former national general secretary Saroj Pandey; MP Vivek Thakur and former Haryana minister Captain Abhimanyu.

The BJP has also appointed six regional in-charges to shore up organisational strength and help with the campaign. They are Lok Sabha MP Sanjay Bhatia (west UP), Bihar MLA Sanjeev Chaurasia (Braj), BJP national secretary Y Satya Kumar (Awadh), national co-treasurer (Kanpur-Bundelkhand), national secretary Arvind Menon (Gorakhpur) and Sunil Ojha (Kashi).

“This team will hold discussions with top leaders, including chief minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev, UP BJP general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal among others,” a senior BJP leader said.

“After meetings in Lucknow on Wednesday, Pradhan along with his team would travel to Gorakhpur on Thursday and would return again to Lucknow for another round of meetings,” party leaders said.

Before coming to Lucknow, BJP’s UP in-charge Radha Mohan Singh and election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan held discussions in Delhi, party leaders said.

The BJP is yet to name four MLCs and party leaders hoped that the much-delayed announcement could be made now.