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BJP fighting to retain Bareilly bastion
Bareilly puzzled by BJP's decision to replace long-time MP Santosh Gangwar with Chhatrapal Gangwar, causing rift in local party unit.
Ask anybody, nobody in Bareilly knows where the Jhumka fell and whether it fell at all.
Similarly, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) decision to drop its eight-time sitting MP Santosh Gangwar and replace him with Chhatrapal Gangwar, who lost the 2022 assembly poll from the Baheri seat of Bareilly, continues to be a head-scratcher for the rank and file of the party.
“We are unable to understand why the BJP dropped Santosh Gangwar. The bigger mystery is replacing him with Chhatrapal Gangwar who doesn’t match up to Gangwar,” said Amit Yadav, a resident of Bareilly cantonment.
The decision has not gone well with the rank and file of the party creating a rift in the local unit.
Such was the opposition to Chhatrapal’s candidature that initially, he had to campaign alone without local office-bearers of the party. At one point, he had even offered to surrender the ticket.
The issue snowballed into a major controversy when a local BJP leader Deepti Bhardwaj posted on X from her official handle about Chhatrapal campaigning alone.
The BJP retaining the Bareilly Lok Sabha seat has now become a matter of prestige with PM Narendra Modi holding a rally a few kms away from the main city on April 25 and a roadshow next day in Bareilly city.
Bareilly votes in the third phase on May 7.
Santosh Gangwar has won the seat eight times for the BJP, including six -times in a row. In 2009, Pravin Singh Aron (who was then in the Congress), defeated Santosh Gangwar.
Chhatrapal Gangwar, who is an active member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has blessings of the top brass of the Sangh Parivar.
Chhatrapal has been two times BJP MLA in 2007 and 2017. However, he had to face defeat in the 2022 assembly poll from the Baheri seat of Bareilly. Samajwadi Party’s Ataur Rehman won the seat by 3,355 votes. Taking advantage of the discontent in the BJP, INDIA bloc candidate Pravin Singh Aron (now in SP) is openly telling voters: “Santosh Gangwar is with me.”
After the rejection of nomination papers of the Bahujan Samaj Party, candidate Chhotelal Gangwar, the contest in Bareilly now remains between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party.
Bareilly Mayor Umesh Gautam was also one of the contenders for the party ticket.
An alleged audio clip of Gautam went viral on social media earlier this month in which he was heard saying, without naming anyone, “Abhi toh patak-patak kar maarenge (He will be targeted now).”
Hindustan Times could not independently verify the authenticity of the clip.
This incident has angered the powerful Gangwar community in Bareilly region, a predominantly farming community that belongs to the OBC category with around 3.5 lakh votes in Bareilly alone.
