BJP pushes for a hattrick of fifers in hilly Uttarakhand
he Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is aiming to win all five seats in Uttarakhand in the third consecutive Lok Sabha election, yet what may prove to be crucial is how such a historic victory will come about. The 24yearold Himalayan State has been the first to bring a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in what the party sees as its success, as it does the rescue of 41 trapped workers from the collapsed tunnel in
Silkyara.
Uttarakhand gave the saffron party backtoback victories in the previous two
Lok Sabha elections as well as in the previous two Assembly elections (2017 and 2022), which saw ‘Kamandal and Mandal’ politics combined astutely.
The NainitalUdham Singh Nagar, and Almora seats are in the Kumaon region. Haridwar, Tehri Garhwal, and Garhwal
(Pauri) are in the Garhwal region.
In the 2022 Assembly election, the Congress witnessed a comeback, but failed to pose a credible challenge to the BJP.
Senior Congress leaders, including Harish Rawat, are giving this pivotal election a miss. Mr. Rawat is only campaigning for his son, Virendra (48), who is making his debut as a candidate in Haridwar. Pitted against Mr. Virendra Rawat is the BJP’s Trivendra Rawat, a former Chief Minister.
The BJP’s “backroom boy”, Anil Baluni, is in the fray at Garhwal. After spending years in Delhi, he is back home in Pauri, hoping to cash in on what he calls the “third wave of Narendra Modi” to secure a clean sweep in the constituency. Voters here are angry over the Union government’s Agnipath defence services recruitment scheme, and the mishandling of land subsidence in Joshimath. Uttarakhand is home to over 1.9 lakh former defence personnel, including 50,000 Army and war widows. The ‘fauji (soldier) vote’ plays an important role in any election in Uttarakhand.
Standing against Mr. Baluni is the Congress’s former State chief, Ganesh Godial. The Congress has promised to quash the Agnipath scheme if voted to power.
In Tehri, the BJP’s Mala Rajya Lakshmi Shah, the first woman MP from the hill State and known as the Rani of Tehri, is campaigning to win for the fourth time since 2012. Ms. Shah’s challenger is not the Congress’s Jot Singh Gunsola, but rather Bobby Panwar, president of the Uttarakhand Berozgaar Sangh, an association of unemployed persons. Mr. Panwar is contesting as an Independent candidate.
The SC reserved seat, Almora, is seeing a fight between arch rivals Ajay Tamta of the BJP and Pradeep Tamta of the Congress. The two leaders are pitted against each other for the fifth time. Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt is once again contesting from NainitalUdham Singh Nagar, which has a significant presence of Muslim and Sikh farmers. They are unhappy with the BJP over its handling of the farmers’ protest, and government action leading to violence in Haldwani.
In 2014, the NDA secured a vote share of 55.9% in Uttarakhand, and this rose to 61.7% in 2019.
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