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Journalism of Courage
IN A MAJOR setback to the ruling BJP, the party lost the bypoll to the Khatauli Assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh, which it had won in 2017 and 2022, to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
RLD candidate Madan Bhaiyya, who was supported by the Samajwadi Party, defeated the BJP’s Rajkumari Saini by over 22,143 votes (getting over 54% votes to the BJP’s 41.72%). Saini is the wife of Vikram Saini, whose disqualification following conviction in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case, led to the bypoll.
The Khatauli win holds significance for the Opposition, and the RLD in particular, as it was the RLD that had initiated Saini’s disqualification. Saini, an OBC leader, had won the 2022 Assembly elections defeating the RLD’s Rajpal Singh Saini, who also had the SP support.
Madan Bhaiyaa, 63, had contested the Assembly polls from Loni in Ghaziabad on the RLD-SP ticket and lost to the BJP’s Nandkishore Gurjar.
The RLD decision to field a Gujjar leader, and an “outsider”, had come as a surprise. RLD president Jayant Chaudhary personally led the campaign for Madan Bhaiyya, who was also slammed by the BJP as a “bahubali”. The RLD and SP concentrated on the ground, focused on door-to-door canvassing and reached out to voters of every caste and community. Azad Samaj Party and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad also extended support to the RLD candidate, and this is believed to have helped the RLD draw Dalit votes, foiling the BJP’s hope of doing so in the absence of the BSP in the fray. The Congress too did not contest.
The Dalits comprise the second largest community in Khatauli, 45,000, after the Muslims at 80,000. Besides, the seat has over 1.5 lakh OBC members, divided into sub-castes like Prajapati, Jat, Saini, Kashyap, Gujjar, Pal and others. The Sainis are around 35,000.
A BJP leader admitted: “We got only a small chunk of the Dalit votes. A majority voted for the RLD-SP alliance.”
While Azad also supported the SP candidate in Rampur, as did RLD leaders who campaigned for the party, the BJP managed to win Rampur.
Saini’s disqualification followed a letter by Jayant to UP Assembly Speaker Satish Mahana asking why Khatauli had not been declared vacant, while SP MLA Azam Khan’s Rampur Sadar had been declared so, promptly after his conviction in a hate speech case.
A Muzaffarnagar court had sentenced Saini and 10 others to two-year imprisonment in the riot case.
