Bypoll: Tiwari gets support he doesn’t want

Uttranchal Chief Minister Narain Dutt Tiwari finds himself in a strange situation. Needing to get elected from the Ramnagar Assembly seat to...

Uttranchal Chief Minister Narain Dutt Tiwari finds himself in a strange situation. Needing to get elected from the Ramnagar Assembly seat to keep his chair, the Congress leader is in a spot over not his opponents but his supporters.

Much to his embarrassment, the Samajwadi has come forward to support him. Only, SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav is remembered, and reviled, in the state for opening firing on pro-Uttaranchal agitationists during his tenure as UP CM. The other party in Tiwari’s corner is the NCP, which again has no love lost for the Congress otherwise.

The worst part is that 10 days before the bypoll, Tiwari could do with some support. All the three major Opposition parties, the BJP, BSP and Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, are ganged up in the opposite side of the ring and have put up a common candidate against Tiwari. The feelings against the SP in the hill state are so strong that the party failed to open its account in the first assembly elections held in Uttaranchal in March this year.

For the Ramnagar by-election, the Congress has been trying to project Tiwari as a ‘Vikas Purush’ (Man of Progress) who would usher in a prosperous future through speedy development of the state. The Opposition’s strategy has been to highlight his role or the lack of it in the agitation for separate statehood. They are saying that it was due to his neglect of the hilly region during his stints as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh that the demand for a separate state gained momentum.

In the light of this, the support extended by SP state unit chief Vinod Bharatwal, who is a close associate of Mulayam, could be politically damaging for Tiwari. Now, a look at the NCP. While it is slightly better placed in the state as compared to the SP — it has a total of one legislator — the party is headed in Uttaranchal by a former Congress rebel, Suryakant Dhasmana. If that is not bad enough for the Chief Minister, Dhasmana was also a close associate of Mulayam once.