The upcoming Lok Sabha byelection for the Kairana constituency and the Assembly bypolls for the Noorpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh will once again put to test the prestige of the BJP and its rivals the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Elections to both the Kairana and the Noorpur seats will be held on May 28, as announced by the Election Commission. Counting of votes will take place on May 31.
The Kairana seat had fallen vacant following the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh while the Noorpur seat fell vacant when BJP MLA Lokendra Singh died in a road accident in February this year.
Given this background, the stakes are high for the ruling BJP which will have to ensure that it retains both the seats, won by it with a huge margin in the last elections. A defeat in both or even one would not augur well for the party, particularly in the light of its recent experiences in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur parliamentary byelections where it was routed by a SP-BSP alliance.
Though the BJP is still to announce its candidates it has got into the election mode by mobilising its workers in western Uttar Pradesh. Meetings are being held by senior party leaders and the caste combination being minutely monitored to ensure a victory for its candidates.
The focus of the impending battle of the ballot will be on Kairana, a constituency dominated by the Jats and Gujjars where the Muslims also play an important role in deciding the outcome of the polls.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, BJP’s Hukum Singh, a Gujjar, defeated his nearest rival, Nahid Hasan of the Samajwadi Party by a margin of over 2-lakh votes. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) were placed third and fourth respectively.
In the forthcoming byelection, the Samajwadi Party would be hoping that the BSP will extend support to its candidate as had been the case in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.
Though the BSP is unlikely to contest the Kairana bypoll, it is not known whether the party supremo Mayawati will announce support for the SP candidate much as Akhilesh Yadav would want her to do. In the event of the BSP deciding to stay neutral in Kairana, there is a distinct possibility
that the Samajwadi Party leadership will ask the RLD to support its candidature in Kairana with the SP returning the favour to RLD in Noorpur, which also has a sizeable number of Jat and Gujjar voters.
However, sources said that RLD general secretary Jayant Chaudhary’s candidature from Kairana as a joint opposition candidate is gaining ground with a section of Congress in western Uttar Pradesh favourably inclined to the proposal.