‘CM, Kalraj played favourites’

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 18: Chief Minister Rajnath Singh and state BJP president Kalraj Mishra are said to have favoured their community and aides in the distribution of party tickets in Uttar Pradesh, sources said. Rajnath reportedly preferred his Rajput community and walked away with 74 of the 309 tickets for them, besides his loyalists from other caste-groups in the first list. Mishra got tickets for his nephew and two aides.

The consensus among the leadership was to give 70 tickets to Brahmins as the community had earlier shown a sense of disenchantment with the party and a slight shift towards the Congress in the last Lok Sabha polls. Mishra, however, weakened his position by pushing the three personal cases, sources said.

Therefore, his nephew Brahma Deo Mishra was given the ticket from the Barsathi constituency. His two aides — Vijay Bahadur Pathak and Virendra Tewari — got the tickets from the Nijamabad and the Sarojini Nagar.

The Chief Minister went out of his way to accommodate Rajputs. Of the 10 people from supporting parties — eight ministers and the widows of two ex-ministers — who were given tickets, eight are Rajputs. They were Prem Prakash Singh, Diwakar Vikram Singh, Fateh bahadur Singh, Shivendra Singh, Ganga Bakht Singh, Sangram Singh, Vivek Singh and Aarti Singh.

Brahmins came the next with 55 tickets. The Kurmi community, which has been solidly behind the BJP, was given 23 tickets. The Vaishya community got 18, the Kayasths eight, the Khatris five and the Bhumihars four.

The Dalits were given 70 tickets. Sources said 27 people are from the Most Backward Communities. The Yadavs account for 12 seats, the Jats six and the Gujars four. One ticket was given to a Muslim. The BJP opted for 24 new faces, three of them from Lucknow.

The party conveniently left the seats of those ministers vacant whose association would have embarrased it, at least in Delhi. Parmanand Tewari, who had fought the last election against Pathak on the BJP ticket, was shifted to Balia by denying a re-nomination to sitting MLA Manju Singh. Ajay Singh, son of dissident Samajwadi Party MP Balram Singh Yadav, was given the ticket from Bharthana.