Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Lok Sabha MP from the parliamentary constituency of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, on Tuesday proposed to resign as MP if the party agrees to her proposal to field her son Mayank in the upcoming assembly elections in the state.
“He (Mayank Joshi) has been working since 2009 and has applied for a ticket from Lucknow Cantt, rightfully. But if the party has decided to give ticket to only one person per family, I will resign from my present Lok Sabha seat if Mayank gets a ticket,” Joshi said.
The former Congress leader, who joined the BJP in 2016, also said she has sent this proposal to party national president JP Nadda. “I will always continue working for the BJP anyway. The party can choose to accept or reject my proposal. I had already declared that I won’t contest elections, many years ago,” Joshi further said.
The Lucknow Cantt seat, one of the total 403 assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, as its name suggests, lies in the state’s capital city of Lucknow. It is currently represented by the ruling BJP’s Suresh Chandra Tiwari, who won a by-election after Joshi was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2019.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi won from here in 2012 as a Congress candidate, and in 2017, as a BJP nominee.
The BJP, meanwhile, has, thus far, announced names of 107 candidates for the UP polls, of whom 105 names are for 113 constituencies which will poll in the first two phases, on February 10 and 14, respectively. For the first two phases, it has fielded candidates such as sitting Noida MLA Pankaj Singh (son of defence minister Rajnath Singh), Sandeep Singh (grandson of later former CM Kalyan Singh) and Mriganka Singh (daughter of late party lawmaker Hukum Singh).
Uttar Pradesh will vote in seven phases, rounds 3-7 of which will take place on February 20, 23, 27, March 3 and 7. The counting of votes will be held on March 10.
