Lucknow, Dec 27,2022:  The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) will begin its ‘Mission 2024’ for Uttar Pradesh from January.

The party’s exercise to win maximum seats from Uttar Pradesh in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections will begin when BJP President J.P. Nadda,g eneral secretary B.L. Santhosh and Union Home Minister Amit Shah visit the state next month.

“The programmes of these leaders are being finalised for January. The process of a constituency wise assessment and, thereafter, candidate selection will begin,” said a party functionary.

The party, according to sources, will be replacing a number of sitting MPs who have crossed the age limit of 75 years.

Those who have been found to be under-performers are also likely to be replaced to counter the anti-incumbency factor.

The BJP leadership, apparently, wants to ensure that there is no rebel candidate when elections finally take place.

“We have seen how rebel candidates harmed us in Himanchal Pradesh and we do not want a repeat in Uttar Pradesh. Issues will be decided well in advance so that such factors get diluted,” said the source.

The functionary said that performance of the candidate would be high on the priority list in candidate selection because with the double engine government, there can be no excuse for non-performance.

Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary has said his party aims to win all 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2024 and has chalked out a strategy for the same.

“In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, we won 64 seats, and lost 16 seats. In the bypolls, we won Rampur and Azamgarh. As of now, there are 14 seats which we do not have. Rae Bareli and Mainpuri are also among them,” he said.

While the Congress has the lone seat of Rae Bareli, won by its president Sonia Gandhi, Mainpuri was also retained by Samajwadi Party in a recent bypoll.