Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls | BJP announces alliances with Apna Dal, Nishad Party

Seat sharing not yet revealed; Nadda declares all 403 seats in the Assembly will be fought together

Aparna Yadav, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law being greeted by BJP National President JP Nadda, in the presence of UP CM Yogi Adityanath, UP; Dy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya and BJP UP state chief Swatantra Dev Singh. at BJP HQ in New Delhi, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday formally announced its alliance with the Apna Dal and Nishad Party for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, with party president J. P. Nadda declaring that the alliance will fight all 403 seats in the Assembly together but declined to spell out the exact contours of the seat sharing agreement.

Flanked by Apna Dal leader and Union Minister Anupriya Patel, and Nishad Party leader Sanjay Nishad, Mr. Nadda insisted that after the large-scale exodus of Other Backward Classes (OBC) MLAs to the Samajwadi Party, including three Ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government, the alliance was en route to victory.

“We are going to fight all 403 seats together, and keep to Prime Minister Modi’s goal of

sabka saath ,

sabka vikas ,

sabka vishwas (all together, all for development, everyone’s trust),” he said.

Ms. Patel of the Apna Dal, which had contested 11 seats in the 2017 polls in alliance with the BJP, also stressed on the social justice aspect of the alliance, blaming non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties who claim the support of backward communities of not doing enough for those sections of society, and lauding Mr. Modi’s government.

BJP National President JP Nadda with Apna Dal leader Anupriya Patel at a meeting at BJP HQ in New Delhi, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022.

“We have always struggled for justice for the common man. With PM Modi, we realised we can strengthen social justice. On issues like constitutional status for the OBC Commission, raising the limit for the creamy layer in OBC, reservations for OBCs in NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test), we got support from this government. So we decided this alliance will be taken forward in 2022,” she said.

Mr. Nishad, who entered into an alliance with the BJP ahead of the general elections of 2019, also spoke on themes of social justice. “Backward Classes were being betrayed and orphaned. Only meagre reservation in jobs was there but this government helped and gave it in educational institutions too. In U.P., parties kept changing but Backward Classes’ condition did not. Issues that remained unresolved for 70 years are being resolved under this government,” he said.

Sources close to both alliance partners said that talks on seat distribution were satisfactory and that since these seats were in eastern Uttar Pradesh, polling for which would be held in the the sixth and seventh phase, the fag end of the seven-phase poll, the exact seat sharing would be revealed later.

The Apna Dal has ambitions of registering as a State party and may want more seats than the 11 it fought last time. The party won nine out of these 11 seats. The Nishad Party had fought on its own on 72 seats in 2017, with the party winning only one seat, that of Gyanpur. This time around, the Nishad Party wants 15 seats and maybe a couple more.

The press conference was preceded by a photo-op of senior leaders of the BJP, including party president J. P. Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who is also in-charge for Uttar Pradesh on behalf of the party, as well as Apna Dal and Nishad Party leaders.