Rural folk voted for us, says main Oppn party
LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) on Wednesday claimed it has badly defeated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recently concluded threetier panchayat polls (direct elections) in the state but would not waste energy in countering “BJP’s horse-trading” to win zila panchayat headship elections.
“We would rather capitalise on putting up an even more impressive show in the UP Assembly polls in 2022,” said SP state spokesperson and former UP minister Rajendra Chaudhary.
Zila (district) panchayat headship is an indirect election in which the directly elected Zila panchayat members vote.
“Seventy per cent population lives in villages and they have given their mandate against the BJP and in favour of the SP already. We had fielded party supported candidates on approximately 1,500 zila panchayat members seats of which more than 800 won. Not only this, party’s national president Akhilesh Yadav’s strategy of leaving ‘free candidates’ on nearly 1,500 seats also worked. Party’s free candidates won nearly 800 of these seats,” said Chaudhary.
There were total 3,050 seats for Zila panchayat members.
Explaining the ‘free candidate’, Chaudhary said that the term is used in such an election when candidates don’t contest on party symbols but are supported by them.
“If there are more than one
desirous or deserving candidates supported by a party, then the party lets all of those candidates contest the seat. If anyone of them wins the seat, then it becomes the party’s victory. So on more than 800 seats, free candidates of SP won the zila panchayat membership”, he explained.
A party leader said that now the direct elections to panchayats are over, the party will now focus on the UP Assembly elections than wasting its energy on the indirect elections for panchayats.
Akhilesh, in a statement on Wednesday, said: “After tasting defeat in the panchayat polls, the BJP is now engaging in enticing, intimidating and threatening winners to win the indirect elections.” Another SP leader said: “Samajwadi Party would anyway win 25 zila panchayat headship elections easily. There is no need to waste energy on the rest of the seats.”
SP’s ally Rashtriya Lok Dal too performed well on some zila panchayat member seats in some districts of west UP, such as Baghpat and Shamli.
Samajwadi Party said it was most likely to win zila panchayat headship in Lucknow, Ayodhya, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sonebhadra, Varanasi, Azamgarh, Prayagraj, Sidharthnagar, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Deoria, Kushinagar, Kanpur Nagar, Mirzapur, Ballia, Bijnore, Etawah, Fatehpur, Unnao, Auriya, Ambedkarnagar, Firozabad, Kasganj, and Etah.