NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has geared up for upcoming assembly elections set for early next years in several states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur and announced the team who would be in-charge of the poll-bound states. 

Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Bhupender Yadav have been announced as stage poll in-charge for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur respectively, while Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who had held charge of the Assembly poll in Bihar in 2020, has been put in charge of Goa.

Fadnavis will be in-charge of Goa along with Tourism Minister G. Kishan Reddy and Minister of State for Railways Darshana Jardosh while with Pradhan - Union Ministers Shobha Karandalaje, Arjun Meghwal, Annapurna Devi and Anurag Thakur have been announced as co-in-charge of the team.

Shekhawat will also have co-in-charges, Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and Meenakshi Lekhi and Lok Sabha member Vinod Chavda.

Joshi will look after Uttarakhand along with Lok Sabha member from Bengal Locket Chatterjee and party spokespersonR.P. Singh, while in Manipur, Yadav Union Minister Pratima Bhowmick and Assam State Minister Ashok Singhal will also be co-in-charge of the state.

BJP is in power in states of UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, it will attempt to retain those states where it has a significant vote base, it will also try to make a mark in Punjab where it has only two legislators in the current assembly and is facing resistance by protesting farmers over the contentious farm bills. 

The Congress which won 17 seats in the 2017 assembly elections were reduced to five in July 2019 when 10 of 15 Congress MLAs join BJP - two Congress MLAs had already joined the BJP earlier. With this, the ruling BJP's strength in the Assembly under Chief Minister Pramod Sawant swelled to 27 seats and they had a comfortable majority.