Ghaziabad: Urban voters help BJP win Sahibabad seat with record margin

The voters in urban segments of Indirapuram, Kaushambi, Vaishali and Vasundhara, among others, helped Sunil Sharma, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from the Sahibabad assembly constituency, secure the win by a record margin in the 2022 state elections, according to the data shared by the Ghaziabad district administration

The voters in urban segments of Indirapuram, Kaushambi, Vaishali and Vasundhara, among others, helped Sunil Sharma, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from the Sahibabad assembly constituency, secure the win by a record margin in the 2022 state elections, according to the data shared by the Ghaziabad district administration.

BJP’s Sunil Sharma won the Sahibabad seat by the highest victory margin of 214,835 votes in the state. (HT archive)

Sharma won the Sahibabad seat by the highest victory margin of 214,835 votes in the state and trounced his nearest rival Amarpal Sharma who contested the seat on a Samajwadi Party ticket.

Of total 481,686 votes polled in the Sahibabad constituency, the BJP secured 322,882 (67.03%) votes and Samajwadi Party got 108,047 (22.43% ), while the Bahujan Samaj Party secured 24,136 (5.01%) and the Congress had a share of only 10,273 (2.13%) votes. In 2017 assembly elections, the vote share of the BJP in the Sahibabad constituency stood at 62.14%.

The official data indicates that BJP’s Sharma received most of the votes from the urban segments. For instance, in Indirapuram, 41,421 voters opted for the BJP while only 6,469 voted for the SP. On the other hand, only 850 voters from the area voted for the BSP while 1,452 opted for the Congress.

Likewise, Vasundhara also had a favourable vote for the BJP which stood at 22,954, while the figures for BSP, SP and Congress stood at 1,258, 3,532 and 976, respectively.

The share of the BJP was also high in case of delta colonies such as Ramprastha, Surya Nagar, and Chandra Nagar. In this area, as many as 11,756 voters went with the BJP, while the SP secured 2,770 votes. The BSP and the Congress secured only 673 and 442 votes, respectively, showed the data.

“The BSP leaders this time did not campaign much and this led a share of its core vote bank shift to the BJP while its minority part shifted to the SP. The core vote bank of the BSP opted for the BJP instead of the SP, as the SP and BSP contested in alliance in the 2019 parliamentary polls but parted ways later. The increased vote share of the BJP indicates that it also received votes from other than its traditional vote bank,” said KK Sharma, associate professor (history) from MM College at Modinagar.

While the urban segments turned majorly to the BJP, the official records indicate that the majority voters from different polling booths in Muslim-dominated areas voted for the SP candidate.

For instance, in Pasonda, a Muslim-dominated locality, the SP secured 15,430 votes while the BJP, the BSP and the Congress could get 6,479, 1,000 and 199 votes, respectively. Similarly, the majority of voters in Shaheed Nagar also opted for the SP that got 13,670 votes, while the BJP, the BSP and the Congress could secure only 3,947, 241 and 159 votes, respectively.

“The voters in Muslim-dominated localities voted tactically and opted for a party which was more likely to give opposition to the BJP. So, majority of these votes shifted to the SP and this time there was lesser division of such votes,” said Sanjay Mishra, associate professor (political science) from MMH Degree College, Ghaziabad.

During the past three assembly elections, the SP has failed to secure a win on any of the seats in Ghaziabad. The last time an SP candidate won in Ghaziabad was in 1996 when Rajpal Tyagi from Muradnagar seat defeated his nearest rival Vivek Tyagi of BJP by a margin of 3,321 votes.