Bansi on save-HVP campaign

Bansi Lal’s popularity has dipped in most parts of the state after his sloppy regime but he is still hoping to ride on thegoodwill created by the developmental works he undertook in his constituency at the cost of being charged with being partial to Bhiwani.

Predictably, his one-point agenda in meeting after meeting is to remind his voters about how he really cared for them.“Whenever he was in power in the state or at the Centre, Bansi Lal did whatever he could for us. We too have not forgotten his contribution and will not let him down,” said a local lawyer, Rajbir Singh Ahlawat. In 1996, HVP nominees had swept the Assembly elections by winning all the seats. Even in 1991, the district had returned six of the fledgling HVP’s seven candidates. But Bansi Lal is not willing to take any chances after his son Surender was defeated by Chautala’s son Ajay Singh in the last Lok Sabha elections by a whopping two lakh votes.

The defeat also served as a wake-up call for the Assembly elections. Bansi Lal, who had decided to contest from Tosham, changed his mind and filed his nomination papers from Bhiwani on the last day. The ideawas to avoid a direct contest with Dharambir of the Congress, who had secured more votes than his HVP rival in Tosham in the last two LS elections. Initially, the switch wasn’t without hiccups when sitting HVP MLA Ram Bhajan Aggarwal showed his resentment by refusing to join the election campaign. But he has now pitched in for the HVP chief, promising to get the trading community to vote for him. “We no longer have the same support base because Bansi Lal never indulged in competitive populism. When others promised free power, he concentrated on correct yet unpopular measures. I think that they have already taken out their anger in the parliamentary elections,” admitted a HVP functionary.

In contrast, the INLD-BJP combine, which won the Bhiwani parliamentary seat in 1999 by a massive margin, started well, but the lack of cohesiveness is pulling the two parties down. In at least two of the seven seats, INLD rebels are denting prospects of the combine’s official nominees. While the INLD and the BJP arebanking on Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee to help them win, Chautala is repeatedly promising to “take special care of Bhiwani” an obvious attempt to counter the campaign of Bansi Lal.

Meanwhile, the Congress, which is hoping to regain the vote-bank it lost to Bansi Lal when he walked out of the party, is confident of upstaging its rivals in Tosham, Mundhal Khurd and Bawani Khera. While it has got Bansi Lal’s son Ranbir Singh Mahendra in Mundhal Khurd, Jagannath, who was a minister in the Bansi Lal ministry, is in the fray from Bawani Khera. “The voters, who got disenchanted with Bansi Lal, are returning to the Congress.

We will certainly make big gains here this time,” claimed a confident Dharambir. But the campaign, which picked up steam, is still young. And these are still early days for such claims.