Huge morale booster for RLD on winning Kairana bypolls

The electoral victory of Rashtriya Lok Dal contestant Begum Tabbasum Hasan in Kairana came as a huge morale booster for her party after results were announced on Thursday. 

Hasan romped home defeating her arch rival and BJP contestant Mriganka Singh by more that 40,000 votes. Her late husband Munawar Hasan was a former SP MP and their son Nahid Hasan is also an SP legislator. 

Having won no seats in the previous Lok Sabha election and after being dumped by its lone MLA during the recent election of Legislative Council, the RLD was desperate to attain a toe hold to have some say in the united opposition strategy for 2019 polls. 

And Thursday’s bypoll result has given just that shot in the arm to the RLD which will now be in a position to ask for a chip, even if it was miniscule, during seat sharing talks.

“It was not an uphill task. We had an upper hand from the time the election was declared in Kairana. Poll equations were in our favour. We contested the election with a ‘do-or-die’ spirit and emerged winner,” RLD spokesman Anil Dubey said. 

The RLD leader attributed the victory as a win of farmers and said that every people of every class voted for its candidate in Kairana. “The Jats, Gujjars, Dalits and Muslims voted for us, en masse,” Dubey claimed.

The RLD spokesman said that the bypoll win has exposed the failures of Union and UP governments of the BJP. 

“The BJP leaders and ministers cheated farmers, unemployed and labourers by making hollow promises. They opted for ‘divide and rule’ tactics to polarize voters and win elections. But the public discarded them and wiped them out,” he said.

RLD’s poll analysts feel that the bypoll win has strengthened it and would pave the way for consolidation of its base among Gujjars and Muslims. 

“The party now will focus on pockets in west UP where it had lost its significance lately. The election has formed an equation which wouldd be feasible in the elections to come,” they opined.  

“Gujjar voters were in a dilemma and did not side with us much. But senior RLD leaders including Chaudhary Ajeet Singh, Jayant Chaudhary camped in those areas and convinced the disillusioned voters,” they said.

Issues like cane farmers’ arrears amounting to Rs 13000 crore served as a major poll plank for the RLD. 

Leaders succeeded in convincing farmers that the BJP government’s much-hyped promise of hiking farm income was only a hoax as the government was not keen to address their woes.

Besides, RLD and its allies succeeded in puncturing BJP’s polarization plan. 

“In previous elections, exodus (Palayan) served as a major poll plank for BJP to impress the Hidu voters. But this time it did not work,” the RLD leaders said.

They said that the BJP tried another tactic by raking up Jinna issue at Aligarh Muslim University, which again boomeranged.

After humiliating in the Gorakhpur and Phoolpur bypolls, the BJP was heavily banking on Kairana for some much-needed poll oxygen by way of a victory. 

But that was not be. Kairana’s result came as an insult to injury to the poll managers of the ruling BJP. The loss would force Saffron poll pundits into a huddle and engage in fierce brainstorming on the reasons for its depleting following.