Glitches leave BJP, Opposition guessing
LUCKNOW: Electronic voting machines (EVMs) have heightened the suspense in Kairana bypoll, leaving both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the united opposition equally flummoxed.
“While both sides are claiming that they have been hurt by snag in the voting machines, until results are out none of us can be absolutely sure,” a BJP leader said. The BJP had won four of the five Kairana assembly segments in the 2017 assembly election.
Although bypolls were held in four Lok Sabha and 10 Vidhan Sabha seats across the country, all eyes are on the result in Kairana, where BJP candidate Mriganka Singh’s father Hukum Singh had flagged the issue of Hindu exodus.
The opposition hopes rest on caste arithmetic, BJP’s on Modi magic, says Athar Siddiqui of the Centre of Objective Research and Development (CORD). A Modi rally in adjoining Baghpat less than 24 hours before Kairana went for polls helped the party, BJP leaders claim. The constituency which shares its boundary with heavily polarised Muzaffarnagar and the contest in Kairana has deeper significance, politicians both from BJP and opposition admit.
Not surprisingly then, BJP had appointed its Muzaffarnagar MP Sanjeev Balyan as Kairana’s election in-charge. The opposition, excited after the BJP’s defeat in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha by-polls, had done everything that they usually wouldn’t to defeat the BJP.
So, arch rivals Congress leader Imran Masood and SP lawmaker Nahid Hasan joined hands to campaign against the BJP, the SP decided to field its candidate on a RLD ticket. BJP too pulled out all the stops with chief minister Yogi Adityanath and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya holding joint rallies.
“Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, apart from testing combined opposition strength, it is also a test of how Jat and Muslims vote,” a BJP leader said.
By fielding a Muslim woman politician of the SP on an RLD ticket, the combined opposition parties too are anxiously waiting to discover how Jats and Muslims voted . The relationship of the two communities broke down after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. On the eve of the polls, the BJP had rushed to the EC to complain against a Deoband-based cleric Hamid Siddiqui for appealing to voters to vote against the BJP.