Nervous BJP drops 45 sitting MLAs; even denied ticket to ministers, Speaker Vidhan Sabha

The shacky Bharatiya Janata Party has dropped 45 of its sitting legislators, including ministers, and allowed its allies Nishad Party and Apna Dal (S) to contest in 11 seats that it had won in the 2017 elections indicating nervousness in the party.

The party sprang the biggest surprise on Tuesday evening when it dropped women welfare minister Swati Singh and even changed the constituency of Law Minister Brijesh Pathak. The party also denied a ticket to Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha, Hriday Narain Dixit.

Swati Singh was sitting MLA from Sarojini Nagar, the outskirts of Lucknow. Speculations were rife that she and her husband Dayashankar Singh, who is vice-president of the party, wanted to contest from that constituency. The party played safe and refused tickets to both husband and wife.

Sources say that Dayashankar Singh might be given a ticket from Ballia, the district to which he belongs, and from where he had unsuccessfully contested elections in 2012.

Instead, Dr. Rajeshwar Singh, the former joint Director of Enforcement Directorate, who took VRS recently and had joined BJP a day earlier, has been given a ticket from Sarojini Nagar.

In another surprise, the party changed the constituency of Law Minister Brijesh Pathak from Lucknow Central to Lucknow Cantonment, thus denying ticket to sitting lawmaker Suresh Tiwari. There were speculations that Aparna Bisht Yadav, the daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had joined the BJP recently, would contest from Lucknow cantonment.

Even BJP MP from Prayagraj, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, had asked for a party ticket for her son Mayank from the Lucknow Cantonment constituency, which she had won twice – once as Congress candidate and in 2017 as BJP candidate.

“The BJP played safe and gave ticket to Brijesh Pathak from that constituency as he also wanted a change in his constituency,” a top BJP leader said.

The BJP also changed its candidate from Bakshi ka Talab- sitting lawmaker Avinash Trivedi was changed with Yogesh Shukla, brother of a top journalist. Anjani Srivastava, a corporator, is the BJP candidate from Lucknow West and Rajnish Gupta from Lucknow Central.

The party has repeated Neeraj Bora from Lucknow North and Urban Development Minister Ashutosh Tandon from Lucknow East.

The party replaced Hriday Narain Dixit, the speaker of Vidhan Sabha, with Ashutosh Shukla from the Bhawant Nagar constituency in Unnao.

In another surprise, the party, which is vocal against dynasty rule, gave a ticket to Jaya Devi, wife of Union Minister Kaushal Kishore, from Malihabad.

Vimla Solanki, sitting MLA from Secunderabad seat and Dr. Anita Lodhi from Dibai were also denied tickets. So, there is a lot of resentment among their supporters.

In Bareilly, there is displeasure in a faction of the BJP over the denial of ticket to Manish Aggarwal, son of former minister Rajesh Agarwal.