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As campaigning is in full swing on all five Uttarakhand Lok Sabha seats, which will go for polls on April 11, the BJP candidates are asking for votes in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the campaigns of the Congress candidates are focussed on targeting the Modi government, making it an election between Modi and the Congress candidates in Tehri, Pauri Garhwal, Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar, Almora, and Haridwar Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP, which had won 57 of the 70 seats in the state Assembly polls in 2017, leaving Congress with only 11 seats, has an advantage over the Congress which had won all five Uttarakhand Lok Sabha seats in 2009 but had faced a debacle in 2014 losing them all to the BJP.
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The Congress candidates, who are targeting the Modi government over allegedly working in favour of a few businesspersons and industrialists like Anil Ambani, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi, and over issues of farmers, demonetisation, GST, and the controversial Rafale deal, among others, can be spotted campaigning not so much for themselves as they are against Modi.
On the other hand, the BJP candidates can be heard reiterating development-related work done by the BJP government in the past years under various central and state government schemes.
Modi has addressed two election rallies in the state — in Rudrapur which falls under the Nainital-Udham seat, and the state capital Dehradun. In the Rudrapur rally, which was to gain support for the BJP from the entire Kumaon belt of the state, the prime minister targeted Congress leader and former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat, who is the Congress candidate from the seat and is contesting against Uttarakhand BJP president Ajay Bhatt.
In his rally in Rudrapur on March 28, Modi had said that he was committed towards the development of the state when he became the prime minister in 2014. However, he had alleged that the Uttarakhand government with Harish Rawat as chief minister had not let him undertake the development-related works in the state. Modi’s comments to tarnish Harish Rawat’s image were seen by Congress leaders as an effort to dissuade people from voting for Harish Rawat since he is a senior Congress leader and with him in the fray, winning the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar seat has become an uphill task for the BJP, sources in the Congress said.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi has already addressed a rally in Dehradun and will be addressing three rallies in the state on Saturday – in Srinagar which falls under Pauri Garhwal Lok Sabha seat, Almora, and Haridwar seats.
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Of the five seats, the position of the Congress is weakest in Haridwar where Congress leader Ambrish Kumar is contesting against sitting BJP MP from Haridwar Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank. Ambrish, who had won the state Assembly election from Haridwar in 1996 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls as an SP candidate, has never won an election in Uttarakhand, while Nishank, who is former Uttarakhand chief minister, has served three terms in the UP state Assembly, and three terms in the Uttarakhand state Assembly prior to winning the Lok Sabha polls from Haridwar in 2014.
Pauri Garhwal is another seat where the BJP has an advantage over the Congress, since the Congress candidate Manish Khanduri, who is the son of former Uttarakhand chief minister and sitting BJP MP from Pauri Major General (retd.) BC Khanduri, is new to politics and has no personal support base in the constituency. For the upcoming polls, he is banking on the Congress vote bank and his father’s reputation. Manish’s opponent is former Uttarakhand BJP president Tirath Singh Rawat who is also his father’s protégé.
In Almora (SC) seat the contest is between senior Congress leader Pradeep Tamta, a former MLA and a former Lok Sabha MP who is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand, and sitting Lok Sabha MP from Almora, Ajay Tamta, who is currently the Union Minister of State for Textiles. A neck-and-neck contest is expected between the two candidates, sources from the BJP and the Congress said.
In the Tehri seat, there is an undercurrent of disappointment in the masses regarding the perceived underperformance of sitting BJP MP from Tehri Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah. Uttarakhand Congress president Pritam Singh, who is the sitting MLA from the Chakrata (ST) seat, is the Congress candidate from Tehri. While Shah, who is riding on an apparent Modi wave, might benefit from it, Singh is expected to give her tough competition.
BSP-SP alliance
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) had entered into an alliance for the upcoming polls in Uttarakhand. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the SP candidate won the Haridwar (SC) seat. It was the only instance when any member of the BSP or SP won a seat across the five Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls the two alliance partners had decided that the SP would field its candidate in the Pauri Garhwal seat, and the BSP would field its candidates in the remaining four seats. However, the SP failed to field any candidate in the Pauri seat, thus narrowing down the competition to that between Congress candidate Manish Khanduri and BJP’s Tirath Singh Rawat.
SP’s former Uttarakhand unit head Satya Narayan Sachan said, “Our aim is to defeat the BJP and we felt that fielding a candidate might reduce vote share of other candidates and might end up benefitting the BJP which we didn’t want, so we decided not to field a candidate in Pauri Garhwal.”
The BSP, which had a vote share of 4.78 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, has fielded candidates in Tehri, Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar, Almora, and Haridwar seats. While BSP isn’t in a winning position in any of the four seats, it might impact vote share of the Congress and the BJP across the four seats, especially in the Almora, which is a reserved seat, sources said.
