Amit Shah to Visit UP to Woo Young Voters for 2019, Meet Workers For By-elections

Lucknow: BJP President Amit Shah will reach Varanasi on Saturday to start preparations for the 2019 General Elections well in advance. He will be addressing young and first time voters in PM Narendra Modi’s Parliamentary constituency while attempting to recreate 2014’s stellar performance.

Shah will be communicating with voters in the age group of 17-35 years and kick-start direct talks with youngsters in Varanasi, which he intends to repeat with youngsters across the country.

Later, on January 25-26, the leader will reach Lucknow to assess the party’s preparations for the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha by-elections. Both the seats fell vacant when CM Yogi Adityanath and Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya resigned from their Parliamentary seats to become MLCs.

Party officer bearers, too, have been called to Lucknow on January 25-26 to meet Shah and also decide on the candidates for the by-elections. The respective election in-charge for both the seats could also be nominated in the meeting. While the Election Commission is yet to announce any dates for the by-elections, preparations have been started already.

The communication programme in Varanasi will be a one of its kinds as the party will appoint 10 youngsters in each of the 1,776 polling booths in Varanasi to hold discussions. Moreover, literature related to party’s ideology will be distributed among the youngsters in order to make them more aware about the Bhartiya Janata Party.

According to BJP sources, after Varanasi, the party would repeat this model of communication in other parts of the entire country in preparation for the 2019 elections.

In the Varanasi event that will be chaired by Amit Shah, there will be an emphasis to influence youngsters who are not BJP members. Youngsters who want to participate in this programme are being registered digitally, in order to get their details into the party information bank, which might be useful for the elections in 2019.

Those who are willing to attend the event will also have to shell out a registration fee of Rs 20 each through the Bhim app.

Later, Shah will head for Lucknow to prepare for the Lok Sabha by-elections. Both the seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur are prestigious strongholds of the BJP.

Keshav Prasad Maurya had defeated his nearest Samajwadi Party rival by 3,08,308 votes in Phulpur, while Adityanath defeated his SP rival by 3,12,783 votes in Gorakhpur, thus being immensely significant for the party.

In its heydays, the Phulpur constituency was represented by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Congress leader Vijay Lakshmi Pandit.

In 2014, Maurya bagged 5,03,564 votes (52.43 percent of the votes polled) to give BJP its maiden victory in Phulpur, which was earlier represented by the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

On the other hand, Gorakhpur saw Adityanath emerge victorious with 5,39,127 votes (51.80 percent votes polled) in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Adityanath started his winning streak in this constituency from 1998 and continued it without a break till 2014.