Parties cancel campaigns, rallies due to spike in coronavirus cases

Lucknow: The Corona pandemic has slowed down the pace of the stormy campaign of political parties engaged in the preparations for the upcoming assembly elections in UP.

The election rally of PM Modi proposed on January 9 in Lucknow is postponed. Whereas in this rally, a target of gathering a crowd of more than one million was fixed by party strategists.

According to party sources, the event was canceled due to the surge in Covid cases and the forecast of bad weather in Lucknow.

At the same time, the Noida visit of CM Yogi Adityanath on Thursday was also canceled. The covid outbreak had a tremendous impact on the electoral campaign of the SP.

The eleventh phase of ‘Samajwadi Vijay Rath Yatra’ was scheduled to kick off from Ayodhya from January 8 and 9.

The BJP stalwarts have been consistently adopting an attacking posture on the SP, referring to the firing on kar sevaks during the Ayodhya movement of the nineties.

In such a situation, the plan to counterattack was chalked out by SP strategists through Akhilesh’s visit to Ayodhya, which was considered very crucial.

It was being considered as the soft Hindutva card of Akhilesh as against the Hindutva plank of the BJP.

According to a senior SP leader, a big opportunity has been missed to counter BJP’s tactics through the visit of SP chief to Ayodhya, now the party will decide the outline of the next plan.

The Congress already postponed its ‘Mahila Marathon’ campaign planned across the state.

According to senior political expert Samiratmaj Mishra, These rallies and events had to be stopped earlier, as thousands of people were gathering in BJP’s Jan Vishwas Yatras, Congress women’s marathons.

Every party, including RLD, SP, was competing to gather the crowd; there was a danger of this gathering turning into a corona spreader.

He also added the situation became uncontrollable as soon as panchayat elections were held during the second wave of the pandemic. Lessons need to be learned from this.