After finalising majority of its candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh last year, the Bahujan Samaj Party is now preparing to change majority of the candidates.
Confirming this, a party functionary said that Ms Mayawati had decided to change candidates after she received adverse feedback from the constituency about the candidate.
“Ms Mayawati is constantly monitoring the situation in each of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies and if she feels that a particular candidate is unable build up the required momentum for his campaign, she is replacing him without a thought,” the party functionary said.
It was because of this that the BSP changed its candidate on the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat and replaced Hargovind Singh with Jitendra Singh Babloo. Babloo, who is known for his criminal antecedents, had left the BSP to contest the Assembly elections on a Peace Party ticket but he lost and made a quiet comeback into the BSP.
Despite his misadventure with the Peace Party, Babloo has been “forgiven” because he makes a formidable candidate in the constituency.
Candidates for Lucknow, Hardoi, Sultanpur, Ballia, Kanpur, Balrampur, Gonda and Gorakhpur are also under the scanner.
Ms Mayawati, according to party sources, is also monitoring the strength of likely candidates being finalised by other parties in each of the constituencies. “Behenji (Mayawati) has told us that she wants to win as many — if not more — seats as the Samajwadi Party and has asked all candidates to focus their campaign on the failures of the Akhilesh government,” said a party coordinator.
The BSP is keen to win a sizeable number of seats in the Lok Sabha elections so that the party can play a key role in the formation of the next government at the centre and Ms Mayawati would certainly not want the Samajwadi Party to establish a lead over the BSP. If sources are to be believed, the BSP is likely to change nearly 42 of its LS candidates before actually releasing its final list at the time of polls. “We are leaving some room for those winnable candidates who come in from other parties at the last minute,” said the party functionary.