Contrary to the speculations the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) performed well in the western Uttar Pradesh where it was expecting farmer’s wrath and consolidation of Muslim votes against it. As reported earlier the Jat community was up in arm against BJP due to the farm unrest, non-payment of cane dues and it was joined by Muslims at most of the seats to ensure defeat of BJP candidates.
However, the results on Thursday proved speculators wrong and BJP not only managed to win a majority of seats in West but also pushed the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) to poor second spot. In Jat and Dalit dominated west UP districts, the strike rate of BJP was near 100 per cent and similar has been the result of urban areas of Noida and Ghaziabad. In Noida city seat, BJP candidate Pankaj Singh, son of Defense minister Rajnath Singh, created history by winning with a margin of over one lakh votes. The anger in the agrarian community of Jat did hamper BJP’s prospects in Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Shamli and Baghpat district where the SP-RLD candidates won on few seats. However the damage was enough and not at all on the expected lines. In Muslim dominated Saharanpur and Moradabad district the ruling BJP has been at a loss but here too it could let SP-RLD make a clean sweep.
In Gautam Buddhnagar (Noida) BJP has all the three assembly seats with a handsome margin and similar was the result in neighboring Ghaziabad district. Despite good performance by the ruling BJP, few of its big faces lost elections this time. These included cabinet ministers Suresh Rana and Kapil Dev Agarwal. BJP’s Hindutva poster boy Sangeet Som too was trailing in Sardhana assembly seat till this report was filed.
Reacting on BJP’s performance in west UP, party spokesperson Naveen Srivastava said that Poll Pandits have been proved wrong and the farmers have extended support to us.
