In the run up to UP Election 2017, BSP chief Mayawati announced first list of candidates
The Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP released its first list of 100 candidates for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls today. The party headed by Ms Mayawati - a heavyweight in the state with a huge Dalit votebank - is hoping to win big in the assembly elections in the state will be held in 7 phases from February 11. The party won 80 seats in 2012.
Today's BSP list released by Ms Mayawati includes 34 Muslims. Prominent among them are Nawab Qazim Ali Khan, who is being fielded from Rampur, Ali Yusuf Ali from Chamaruwa, Mohammad Islam Khan from Gunnaur and Syyeda Begum from Budhana from Muzaffarnagar.
Other prominent leaders fielded by BSP chief Mayawati include:
- Mukesh Dixit: Saharanpur City
- Majid Ali: Deoband
- Diwakar Deshwal: Kairana
- Satyendra Solanki: Meerut Cantonment
- Pankaj Jolly: Meerut City.
- Dharampal Singh: Etmadpur
- Raj Bala: Chaprauli
- Hazi Zakir Ali: Loni
- Amarpal Sharma: Sahibabad
- Suresh Bansal: Ghaziabad.
- Ravikant Mishra: Noida
- Satveer Singh Gujjar: Dadri
- Vedram Bhati: Jewar
- Thakur Jaiveer Singh: Barauli (Aligarh)
- Ramveer Upadhyaya: Sadabad (Hathras)
Polling to pick a new 403-member assembly, the largest in the country, will end on March 8. The results will be declared on March 11.
Following the government's ban on 500 and 1000 rupee notes, meant to flush out black money and curb corruption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently took potshots at Mayawati's BSP, calling it a party flapping to deposit its ill-gotten wealth in bank accounts in his address in Lucknow.
Sources in the Enforcement Directorate said around 104 crores were deposited in a Union Bank account belonging to the BSP in the seven weeks since the government's ban on the high denomination 500 and 1,000-rupee notes on November 8.