Oppn strategy clicks in UP

The BJP defeat in Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur assembly constituency has signalled the strength of unity to the opposition in Uttar Pradesh.

Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal won the Kairana seat by a margin of 44,618 votes, while Naeemul Hasan of the SP bagged the Noorpur Assembly seat by 5,662 votes.

The winning RLD candidate in Kairana was backed by the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In Noorpur, the main opposition parties supported the SP nominee.

Against this united opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party's all-out effort to stop a chain of losses in bypolls in the state since 2014 proved futile even though Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath led from the front.

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi too held a road show in the vicinity of Kairana, prompting the RLD to approach the Election Commission against what it saw as an attempt to influence polling a day later.

The opposition said its strategy was to confine the election, especially in Kairana, on issues like sugarcane dues from mills and farmers' problems.

The opposition parties formulated a well thought-out plan to check polarisation on communal lines and ensure that sugarcane and farmers remained the main issues, RLD spokesman Anil Dubey said.

The opposition parties concentrated mainly on door-to-door campaigning rather than organising big rallies, he said.

"Collecting big crowds was never a part of our strategy which could have given our opponents a chance to gain advantage in the area, which is communally charged," he said.

Opposition leaders claimed that it was with this in mind that Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav did not campaign personally in Kairana, while RLD's Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary led the campaign with a personal touch.

"It is not necessary to personally visit a place to campaign in the elections, SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said.

An appeal was issued on behalf of the party chief and the rest was managed by the leaders there," he said."The need for a personal visit by Akhilesh Yadav was not felt."

An upbeat joint opposition candidate Tabassum Hasan had said, "We believe in live and let live... we meet everyone, sit with everyone and take everyone along.

We have done that and we will continue to do so. We live in peace and harmony," she said.

She said the BJP never talked about real issues.

"They bring up issues like photos of Jinnah. After all, Jinnah was once from here, she said referring to the recent row over Pakistan founder's portrait which hangs at the student union office on Aligarh Muslim University campus.

That is not a real issue. The real issues are those of the farmers, the poor. On that, they have nothing to say," she said.

The opposition had tasted success in the earlier Lok Sabha bye-elections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, winning seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.

It applied the lesson from those bye-elections to the Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur assembly bypolls, wresting both seats.

The ruling BJP, however, made a big effort to win the two seats, especially Kairana.

It hoped to send out a strong message that the drubbing it got in the March bypolls was an aberration, and that the party was very much a force to reckon with in western UP.

Mriganka Singh, the losing candidate, said the power of the alliance was seen in these polls and the BJP will have to work harder in future elections.

"A lot of work has been done by the central and the state governments, but it seems that we have not been able to take that message to the people," she said.