New Delhi: BJP’s Asha Nautiyal won the Kedarnath bypoll by a margin of 5,622 votes, beating the Congress’s Manoj Rawat, who secured 18,192 votes.
Nautiyal is the Uttarakhand BJP Mahila Morcha president while Rawat is a former MLA. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of Kedarnath MLA Shaila Rawat in July.
Nautiyal had previously won from the seat in 2002 and 2007.
The bypoll became a prestige battle with the Congress accusing the BJP of “inciting Hindu-Muslim tensions” ahead of voting on 20 November. The seat holds significance especially for the BJP as it is home to the revered Kedarnath shrine, which along with Uttarakhand’s Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri, forms one of the most important Hindu pilgrimages, the Char Dham Yatra. The hill state sees thousands of Hindu pilgrims as well as large numbers of tourists every year.
The BJP currently holds 46 of 70 seats in the state assembly. Though the Congress lost all five of the state’s Lok Sabha seats in the June elections, it got success in July during the bypolls held in Badrinath and Haridwar district’s Manglaur.
The BJP had also put its entire focus on the seat which saw heavyweights, from the chief minister to state ministers, MLAs, MPs campaigning. Given its back-to-back electoral losses in UP’s Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which covers Ayodhya, and the Badrinath assembly seat in Uttarakhand, the party had pulled its weight in this particular seat.
Days before poll dates were announced for the Kedarnath seat, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had made a string of announcements including construction of new roads, toilets, development of auditoriums and sports grounds among others.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)