BJP reposes faith in Ghaziabad’s five sitting MLAs, offers them poll ticket

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released the list of their candidates for the first and second phases of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, and reposed faith in all the five sitting MLAs from Ghaziabad. While declaring the list of the candidates on Saturday, BJP functionaries said they finalised candidates for 57 out of the 58 constituencies which will go to the polls in the first phase on February 10, and 48 out of the 55 constituencies which will go to the polls in the second phase.

According to party sources, the BJP has repeated 63 of the 83 sitting MLAs in their list, and nearly 58% of the candidates are from the other backward classes (OBC) and scheduled castes (SC). The list also includes names of 10 women candidates.

“The Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh has tightened the noose for goondas and corrupt people in the past five years, the biggest example being women can walk safely at night in the state. In the past five years, there have been no riots in Uttar Pradesh. There is a new hope and the state is now heading towards becoming the number one state in the country,”said Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan during a press briefing on Saturday.

“People of Uttar Pradesh will shower their blessings on the BJP, and we will again win with more than 300 seats this election,” Pradhan added.

Ghaziabad district has five assembly seats– Loni, Muradnagar, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad and Modinagar. The BJP candidates, who have been the party ticket, said they have already jotted down their agendas while adding that it is their grassroot level work, which has helped them get a ticket to contest the elections for a second time.

The biggest seat of Sahibabad, comprising localities such as Indirapuram, Vasundhara, Vaishali, will be represented by sitting BJP MLA Sunil Sharma, who will face his rival rival Amarpal Sharma–the candidate nominated by the Samajwadi Party (SP). This is the fourth time that Sunil Sharma got the BJP ticket for contesting the assembly elections.

Sunil Sharma has been associated with the BJP for about 32 years and was an active worker during the ‘Ram Mandir Andolan’ launched by the party. He was a district president of the BJP’s youth wing in 1990 and also remained a city president in 2001, after which he got his first assembly ticket in 2007 and defeated Suresh Bansal of the Bahujan Samaj Pary (BSP) from the Ghaziabad constituency.

Sharma got his second assembly ticket for Sahibabad assembly seat and lost to Amarpal Sharma in the 2012 elections, who then contested on a BSP ticket. In the 2017 elections, Sharma defeated Amarpal Sharma, who then contested on a Congress ticket, by a margin of 150,685 votes.

“People have seen the works done by the BJP in Centre and the state as well. The party has changed candidates in places, such as Garhmukteshwar, Dibai, Bulandshahr etc, wherever required. They have assessed the ground level situation in Ghaziabad and repeated the candidates,” said Sunil Sharma.

“We have only a single point agenda of development. Some projects, such as a government hospital, is in pipeline and it will be surely completed this time. The project for water supply for Khoda is almost final. The works done so far will be carried forward,” he added.

Like Sharma, UP minister Atul Garg, who will be contesting the elections from Ghaziabad constituency, has been nominated for the third time by the BJP. Garg is the son of former mayor late Dinesh Chand Garg.

Garg was defeated in the 2012 elections, when he was trounced by his rival Suresh Bansal of the BSP. However, he defeated Bansal in the 2017 polls with a margin of 70,505 votes.

“Our agenda is clear— development of Ghaziabad city. Repeating candidates shows that the party is confident of the works done by the MLAs and this is why the same candidates are being given tickets again,” said Garg, who also holds charge as a state minister and holds the portfolios of health, family welfare, mother and child welfare.

“The healthcare infrastructure got a major boost during the pandemic. If the opposition parties say that we did not work, they should come out with facts. The pandemic affected all states across the country and UP did remarkable work in providing treatment, medicines and other facilities,” said Garg, who is pitted against Bansal again (BSP) and Congress candidate Sushant Goyal.

Nand Kishor Gurjar has been offered a ticket again for the Loni constituency. Gurgar joined the BJP in 2009 on the insistence of Union minister Rajnath Singh, who contested the Lok Sabha elections from Ghaziabad and secured a majority.

Gurjar was offered his first assembly ticket from Loni in 2017, when he defeated his rival Zakir Ali from BSP, by a margin of 42,813 votes and since then, has been raising issues of illegal slaughterhouse, cattle slaughtering, etc.

This time, he is pitted against political heavyweight Madan Bhaiya, who is one of the key contestants from Loni fielded by the Rashtriya Lok Dal-SP combine. Both the candidates are Gurjars and have marked presence among voters in Loni which has a mixed population. Gurjar could not be reached for his comments on Saturday.

Dr Manju Shivach, who will be contesting on a BJP ticket for a second time from Modinagar, hails from a family that has been traditionally associated with the BJP. She is a gynaecologist and her family owns a hospital in Modinagar, which is also managed by her husband Dr Devendra Shivach.

“It is the hard work which I have put in that has earned me the ticket for a second time. During my tenure, I lowered the development charges from 3,090 to 1,200 and also completed the flyover works and a girls’ degree college. Besides, I also brought in an oxygen plant. During the pandemic, no opposition party leaders were out on streets while I was doing rounds of hospitals and cremation grounds with people,” said Shivach, who defeated BSP’s Wahab Chaudhary by a margin of 66,582 votes in the 2017 elections.

“Next, I have an agenda for setting up a higher education college, open gyms, declare one area as an industrial area. Besides, I am also trying to get in a good CBSE or Kendriya Vidyalaya school for children here. I am also trying to promote more women self-help groups for financial independence of women,” she added.

Ajit Pal Tyagi, who is the sitting MLA from Muradnagar and has been offered a ticket again, is the son of former UP minister Raj Pal Tyagi. Pal faces Surendra Kumar Munni, who has been fielded by the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which has stitched an alliance with the Samajwadi Party in western Uttar Pradesh. The other contenders for this constituency include Mahesh Tyagi from the Aam Aadmi Party, Bijender Yadav from the Congress and Haji Ayyub Idrishi from the BSP.

Tyagi had defeated Sudhan Rawat of the BSP by a margin of 89,612 votes from Muradnagar in the 2017 polls.

“The candidates in Ghaziabad were not changed as the five surveys by the party found that the five sitting MLAs have worked in their respective areas and have more chances of winning,” said Sanjeev Sharma, city president of the BJP.


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