New Delhi, April 27 (IANS) Out of the 13 phase-IV seats in Uttar Pradesh going to the polls on April 29, the Bharatiya Janata Party faces tough challenge from the Samajwadi Party- Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) grand alliance or ‘mahagathbandhan'(MGB) on seven seats.
Six of these seven seats were won by the BJP in 2014. If the votes polled by SP and BSP in last Lok Sabha elections are taken into account, the BJP falls short of numbers in Shahjahanpur, Kheri, Hardoi, Misrikh, Etawah and Jhansi. Kannauj — the seventh seat dominated by MGB — is already in the SP’s kitty as Dimple Yadav won from here with narrow margin but with the BSP’s support, the SP can widen its lead.
The BJP, on the other, is placed comfortably beyond the opposition alliance’s striking range in Unnao, Farrukhabad, Kanpur, Akbarpur, Jalaun and Hamirpur. If the support base of SP and BSP remains intact, the BJP can lose six seats in Phase-IV from its impressive tally of 71 out of 80 in 2014.
The battle for central Uttar Pradesh was comprehensively won by the BJP in 2014 winning 12 out of these 13 seats. With the Congress and SP’s breakaway Shivpal Yadav’s Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA) in fray separately, the fight becomes multi-cornered.
