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ASSEMBLY BY-POLLSBJP keen to wrest Jalalpur and Rampur but tough fight likely
LUCKNOW: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition in Uttar Pradesh are engaged in an interesting psychological battle in Jalalpur and Rampur, which are
LUCKNOW: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition in Uttar Pradesh are engaged in an interesting psychological battle in Jalalpur and Rampur, which are among the 11 by-poll seats that go to polls on October 21.
The BJP, which won Jalalpur just once in 1996 and hasn’t opened its account in Rampur assembly seat, is desperate to wrest these two seats to gain psychological edge over Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, but the two opposition parties are all bent to deny it this pleasure.
BJP’s numerical dominance in UP assembly would remain unaffected, irrespective of the by-poll results.
“The BJP is aiming to continue its political dominance. If Jalalpur and Rampur fall in its kitty, they would indicate that even those citadels that had withstood the Modi wave have crumbled under a relentless onslaught of the BJP,” said Athar Siddiqui of the Centre for Objective Research and Development.
Desperate to thwart the BJP bid, the BSP approached its Ambedkaranagar MP Ritesh Pandey’s father Rakesh Pandey to contest from Jalalpur seat. However, after Rakesh opted out on health grounds, the BSP quickly roped in Chhaya Verma, a young OBC woman and daughter of BSP’s legislative party leader Lalji Verma, who represents the Katehari assembly segment of Ambedkarnagar.
Ritesh had won Jalalpur seat in 2017 UP polls and his election to Lok Sabha caused the by-poll here.
“I will win,” says Chhaya, a Kurmi, among the numerically dominant OBC sub-caste. Against her, the BJP has fielded Rajesh Singh, son of Sher Bahadur, who had won the seat for BJP in 1996. After 1996, Sher Bahadur also won the seat as an independent and then successfully contested on SP and BSP tickets, too, underlying his political importance in the seat where dalits, Muslims and Brahmins hold the key.
Both BSP and BJP have launched a door-to-door campaign for the seat where BJP has also engineered defections of key Samajwadi Party leaders who joined the party in the presence of deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya recently.
Welcoming the leaders into the BJP, including zila panchayat chief Sudhir Singh Mintu and locally influential KK Mishra, Maurya gave a hint of the party plan on these seats.
“You can take it from me. These seats, which evaded us last time would be ours now. No caste arithmetic, only Modi magic would work,” he said.
Locally the buzz is that BSP leadership, which reverted to the zonal system after parting ways with the Samajwadi Party, has directed its zonal coordinators to carry out an intensive campaign for the seat.
In Rampur, another interesting contest is on the cards where local MP Azam Khan broke down while campaigning for his wife Tazeen Fatima, a Rajya Sabha MP. Barring a solitary, stray loss in 1996, Azam Khan represented the Rampur seat uninterrupted since 1989 till he got elected to Lok Sabha in 2019 LS polls, which caused the by-poll.
The BJP is desperate to make an impression in this seat and Azam, who had cried before the people in the 2019 LS polls, is again banking on his clout in this Muslim majority seat to help his wife win.
“What’s my fault? All my life I have stood up for you, been your voice. Today I am being attacked for no fault. Please help me,” he has been saying in his public meetings in Rampur.
However, the BJP feels SP’s decision to field Azam’s wife whose Rajya Sabha tenure will last till November 2020 shows that the SP bastion isn’t all that safe either. “For us it’s a win either way. If we win, it opens up this SP bastion for us. If we don’t it means that Azam’s wife would have to vacate her Rajya Sabha seat which would again be to our advantage in the upper house,” a BJP leader said.
