Tharali bypoll: BJP, Cong rope in star campaigners
It’s a tiny dot on the map of Uttarakhand but in Tharali stakes appear very high for the BJP and the Congress as both parties have roped in star campaigners to pep up their campaign for the bypoll to the reserved assembly constituency
It’s a tiny dot on the map of Uttarakhand but in Tharali stakes appear very high for the BJP and the Congress as both parties have roped in star campaigners to pep up their campaign for the bypoll to the reserved assembly constituency.
Analysts also see in the rival parties’ strategy a “desperate bid to register a win, as a loss in the bypoll would badly hurt them politically”.
The bypoll to Tharali in Chamoli district was necessitated by the death of sitting MLA Magan Lal Shah in February.
The ruling BJP has fielded his widow and district panchayat chairperson Munni Devi from the reserved (SC) seat whereas the opposition Congress has fielded former MLA Jeet Ram. Ram had lost Tharali to Shah in the 2017 assembly election.
On Thursday, in a show of strength both the BJP and the Congress held two rallies in favour of their respective candidates.
The twin rival parties have now roped in a battery of star campaigners to woo voters.
The BJP, for instance, will soon deploy all its top leaders including party chief Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and central ministers — Smiriti Irani and Thavar Chand Gehlot among others, to address poll rallies.
Similarly, the Congress has released a list of its 40 star campaigners. Among those who would be jazzing up the party’ poll campaign include its president Rahul Gandhi, actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar and former cricketer Navjot Siddhu.
Analysts said the BJP and the Congress are “literally fawning” over the constituents of Tharali owing to the high political stakes involved in the bypoll results.
“It may be a mere bypoll but both in electoral terms and politically, its results are going to be crucial for the twin rival parties,” Prof MC Joshi of Kumaon University said.
According to him, the BJP is as desperate to register a win in Tharali as the Congress.
“The BJP is desperate because it knows very well that a defeat in Tharali would mean the Modi wave has ceased to exist in the mountain state,” he said.
Such a scenario would be a “shocker for the BJP because, thanks to the Modi magic, it had won” all the five Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2014 parliamentary elections and later recorded a three-fourth majority in the 2017 assembly polls.
“For the Congress that was completely decimated in the last assembly polls, a win in Tharali would mean that it has some future left in the state,” Joshi said.
“A win in that bypoll would also infuse a new life in that party which is now literally down in the dumps,” said Prof MM Semwal of HNB Garhwal (Central) University.
The academic sees in the two rival parties deploying their “armies of star campaigners to record a win in a small bypoll” a sign of desperation.
“The BJP, for instance, is desperate for a win in Tharali because it wants to send a message that it is not losing its popularity everywhere as the recently held bypolls in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan had indicated.”
For the Congress, the Tharali bypoll results would be crucial for two reasons. “It will show where this (BJP) government stands in terms of its performance besides reflecting the public mood ahead of the next (2019) general elections,” said MD Joshi, the chief spokesperson for the Congress state unit.
The BJP, too, considers the Tharali bypoll a “crucial” test case.
“It will help us evaluate our party’s popularity, its organisational strength, and our government’s performance,” said BJP state unit general secretary Naresh Bansal.