SP-RLD alliance stands a chance to win in Aligarh?
The Samajwadi Party (SP)- Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance is hoping to win in Aligarh this assembly pols and is making an all-out effort to repeat their success of 2012 polls when both the parties contesting separately then had emerged victorious on all the seven seats of the district. This may happen provided their perception of resentment amongst Jat against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) works. However, the BJP bounced back in the 2017 state assembly election and won all seven assembly seats of the district.
Aligarh district has a handsome number of Muslim and Jat voters, yet there are certain other factors, including the Kalyan Singh factor. The 2022 assembly election is taking place after the death of former UP chief minister and poster boy of the Ram Janambhoomi movement whose home district is Aligarh. He died after a prolonged illness in August last year.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath had accompanied the mortal remains of ‘Babuji’ (as Kalyan Singh was referred to) to Aligarh and stayed there overnight. Thus, a sympathy wave prevails in name of Lodh leader whose grandson Sandeep Singh rose to become a minister in UP after winning from his grandfather’s traditional Atrauli seat in 2017 election and is yet again in the fray against Viresh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party. Singh is banking on the increased Yadav voters after delimitation.
Moreover, besides Muslim, Jat and Lodh voters, Jatav and non-Jatav SC voters are in a sizeable number and candidates from the Bahujan Samaj Party, expecting division of Muslim votes, are in the fight at almost all seats of the district and may damage other parties.
“The SP-RLD alliance is much hopeful of doing better this time in Aligarh and this is certainly a cause for concern for the BJP which is under pressure to repeat its performance of 2017 polls. Voters are evasive or prefer silence in response to questions related to their choice this election and the seven seats of Aligarh could be anybody’s game this election,” opines prof Rahat Abrar, a political analyst and retired head of Urdu Academy
at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
A look at previous assembly election results further suggests that all political parties have a reason to have expectations of their own. While 2017 assembly elections were a BJP show all the way but it was the BJP which had no seat to its credit in 2012 assembly elections as SP had won 4 and the RLD 3.
The scenario was not that favourable for the BJP even in the 2007 UP polls when it had won only two seats including Atrauli, the stronghold of Kalyan Singh whose daughter-in-law Premlata Devi had won the Lodh dominated seat.
The RLD had won two assembly seats of Iglas and Khair, the Samajwadi Party had emerged a winner from Aligarh city seat while the BSP had won Koil and Baroli seats then.
Veteran lock industrialist Zafar Alam, who won the Aligarh
city seat in 2012 on an SP ticket, is yet again in the fray from the same seat as an SP-RLD alliance candidate after losing by 15,440 votes in the 2017 polls to BJP candidate Sanjeev Raja whose wife Mukta Raja is the BJP candidate this time.
Former AMU student union president Mohd Salman Imtiaz is the Congress nominee from the Aligarh city seat. The Congress is trying to repeat its success of 2002 assembly election when its candidate Vivek Bansal had won from the seat. Bansal lost by a slender margin in 2012 while contesting as the Congress candidate from Koil assembly seat and is again contesting as a Congress candidate this time.
However, all eyes are on
Atrauli, the rural constituency of Aligarh which Kalyan Singh represented 10 times. His grandson and presently minister of state in UP Sandeep Singh is the sitting MLA from the seat and is again in the fray from here.
The RLD is mainly eying Iglas and Khair, the two seats dominated by Jats but reserved in this election. Sitting BJP legislator Rajkumar Sahyogi had won the 2019 by-poll from Iglas after chief minister Yogi Adityanath announced a university after prominent Jat leader Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh who had donated land to the AMU. Having population of 36 lakh, Aligarh district will go to poll in the first phase of the sevenphase UP polls on February 10.