With Uttar Pradesh assembly elections months away, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has drawn up its electoral strategy for candidate selection and ticket distribution.
According to Zee News sources, the BJP is opting for a comprehensive, multi-tiered survey process to evaluate sitting legislators and identify winnable candidates for all 403 assembly constituencies. While the ruling party currently holds 258 seats in the assembly, the upcoming evaluations will cover every single constituencyincluding those held by alliance partners such as the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), Apna Dal (Soneylal), and the Nishad Party.
Three-Tiered, Confidential Ground Surveys
To ensure objective and accurate data, the party will execute a covert three-level survey approach designed to eliminate personal bias or localized lobbying. The survey is likely to decide the fate of MLAs as those having negative public feedback may not get tickets again.
Field surveyors will bypass relying solely on top-tier leadership feedback, opting instead to coordinate with grassroots BJP functionaries and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadres at the district level. Surveyors are instructed to blend into public spaces, engage citizens on regional issues, and organically transition into collecting sentiment regarding sitting BJP MLAs or previous candidates.
This mirrors the party’s strategy ahead of the 2022 assembly elections, when BJP utilized agencies like Jarvis and ABM to vet candidates, resulting in new faces on 165 tickets and the dropping of over 120 incumbent legislators.
What the Survey Will Measure
Professional evaluation teams will interact directly with district chiefs, mandal presidents, booth workers, local merchants, professionalsincluding doctors, lawyers, and teachersas well as women and youth groups.
Key performance indicators and questions for the ground assessment will focus on:
* The general public image and accessibility of the sitting MLA.
* Ground-level execution of development projects over the past four and a half years.
* Standing within the local caste matrix and among party cadres.
* Any major controversies, allegations of corruption, or administrative irregularities.
* Winability potential if renominated, alongside vetted alternative contenders.
In Muslim-dominant constituencies, surveyors will also specifically assess the ground-level impact and beneficiary reach of government welfare schemes like free rations. Lawmakers who receive negative performance reviews face a high probability of being denied tickets.
Focusing on 61 Hard-Loss Constituencies
Beyond evaluating incumbents, the BJP has carved out a separate strategy for 61 seats where the party has faced continuous defeats across the last three assembly elections in 2012, 2017, and 2022. Intensive data collection on these seats will focus on granular booth-level feedback, detailed demographic breakdowns, and caste equations to unearth viable candidates.
Eastern UP Focus: Out of these 61 target seats, 22 are clustered in eastern districts such as Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, and Mirzapur.
Western UP Focus: Another 13 seats are situated in western districts including Saharanpur, Moradabad, and Bijnor.
Historically, the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) capitalised heavily on these regions during the 2022 elections, winning 27 of these 35 specific eastern and western seats when it was allied with the RLD. The SBSPthen aligned with the SPalso secured three of those seats. With both the RLD and SBSP now part of the BJP-led NDA coalition, party leadership is banking on shifted political alignments and targeted candidate selection to flip these long-standing opposition strongholds.