Lucknow: With the Lucknow Mayor seat announced as a female seat (unreserved), nearly all the political parties have started reviewing the performance of their women leaders and have started discussions to finalise the name for the mayoral candidate.

In the Samajwadi Party camp, the name of former minister Juhie Singh is doing the rounds. The Congress is yet to come up with a name.

The ruling BJP is seeing the most hectic negotiations to pick a candidate, with probable candidates from both within and outside the party making a pitch.

Some names in the running include Sanyukt Bhatia, wife of late BJP MLA Satish Bhatia, ex-municipal councilor Ranjana Dwivedi, former Rajya Sabha member Kusum Rai, Jaya Laxmi Sharma, the wife of Deputy CM and ex-mayor Dinesh Sharma, Namrata Pathak, the wife of Law Minister Brajesh Pathak, BJP MLA Dr Dinesh Bora’s wife Bindu Bora and Dr Shweta Singh who recently jumped ship to the BJP from the Samajwadi Party.

The favourites, however, are Sanyukt Bhatia and Ranjana Dwivedi, who are said to have RSS and VHP backing, respectively.

Interestingly, this time six out of 16 municipal corporations are reserved for women mayors. These include the Modi's parliamentary constituency, Varanasi, and Gorakhpur, the turf of CM Yogi Adityanath.