Jitin Prasada: Banking On Modi Factor And Viksit Bharat In Pilibhit (image: facebook.com/jitinprasada1/)

Jitin Prasada, former Congress leader and a Cabinet Minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, is the BJP candidate for the Pilibhit Lok Sabha seat. He replaced the sitting MP, Varun Gandhi. Pilibhit parliamentary seat has been a family bastion for Varun Gandhi, represented by his mother, Maneka Gandhi, or him for over two decades.

Jitin Prasada shifted allegiance from Congress to the BJP in 2021 and soon found a place in the state ministry. He was considered one of the close associates of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Prasada started his political career with the Youth Congress as a general secretary. In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, his debut election, he got elected from Uttar Pradesh”s Shahjahanpur, and in the 2009 polls, he won from the Dhaurara Lok Sabha constituency. He served as a minister twice in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.

In the subsequent Lok Sabha polls after 2009, 2014, and 2019, he lost the seat, and even in the 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, he contested unsuccessfully.

In the election campaigns, Jitin Prasada focused on the work done by the PM Modi-led BJP government and his vision for a “Viksit Bharat” (developed India). He did not venture into discussing local issues like monsoon flooding and a lack of industrial infrastructure or transportation facilities to connect important cities.

Jitin Prasada is pitted against Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate Bhagwat Saran Gangwar, and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fielded Anis Ahmad Khan. Prasada is one of the two cabinet ministers who got Lok Sabha tickets, the other being Minister of State for Revenue Anoop Pradhan Valmiki, a BJP candidate from Hathras.

The Pilibhit Lok Sabha constituency consists of five assembly seats: Baheri, Pilibhit, Barkhera, Puranpur (SC), and Bisalpur, all of which belong to the BJP.