Lok Sabha Polls: BJP Noida Chief Supports Mahesh Sharma Amid Speculations Over Candidature

With several months to go for the 2024 polls and candidates jostling for BJP tickets, the party’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district president Manoj Gupta on Monday threw his weight behind sitting Lok Sabha MP Mahesh Sharma amid speculations of an IAS officer getting ticket.

Gupta said BJP’s central leadership will select the candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha election, taking note of certain news reports which projected some other people, including an IAS officer, as probable candidates to replace Sharma.

Sharma, a veteran BJP leader, represented Noida as its very first MLA when it was made a new assembly constituency. He lost the 2009 Lok Sabha poll for parliamentary seat Gautam Buddh Nagar but won in 2014 and 2019, Gupta noted. “We will never allow the sponsored agenda going against the honourable MP (Sharma) to come true and whoever is running this agenda, you all know very well what their intention is,” the BJP’s district president told reporters.

On the probable candidacy of IAS officer Brajesh Narain Singh on BJP ticket, Gupta said if the “candidate declared by the news channel” has to do politics, then first of all he should resign from his job and then play his role in the political field. Gupta added that he would write to central and state governments to take action against Singh, who is currently working as Special Secretary to APC Branch in Lucknow and served as district magistrate in Gautam Buddh Nagar from 2017 to 2020. When contacted by PTI, the IAS officer said, “I have never spoken anything on political lines. I know my propriety. Some people may have misinterpreted my social meetings.”

“I meet people during holidays when I am invited by them. I talk to them on social issues and impact of development projects like Noida Airport and expressway corridors,” Singh said. He invited people to check his social media posts to see if he has made any “political comments” during those meetings.

The BJP’s press conference comes in the wake of Singh, known for his role in land acquisition for first phase of the Noida International Airport and attaching properties of mafia under Gangster’s Act, holding public meetings with residents’ associations across Gautam Buddh Nagar in recent past few months.