Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance sprung a surprise in Uttar Pradesh’s Khatauli Thursday, wresting the seat from the BJP candidate in what was the most intensely fought bypoll among all three held in the state on 5 December.
SP-RLD candidate Madan Bhaiya, who had been targeted by the BJP in the run-up to elections as a “bahubali (strongman)” and an “outsider”, defeated Rajkumari Saini, wife of convicted BJP ex-MLA Vikram Saini, whose disqualification from the UP assembly necessitated the bypoll. Saini was convicted in a Muzaffarnagar riots case.
Bhaiya defeated Saini by over 22,000 votes.
First-time candidate Sureshvati Devi, who contested as an Independent, received only 145 votes. Devi is the mother of Gaurav Singh, one of the two Jat youth who were reportedly lynched by a mob of Muslims on 27 August 2013, while they were attempting to escape after allegedly killing Shah Nawaz, a resident of Kawal village in Khatauli, purportedly over an eve-teasing incident, thus triggering the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.
Her husband Ravindra Kumar, who had earlier claimed that their son’s name was being used for political gains by the party in power in UP, had extended his support to the BJP candidate after meeting Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on 30 November.
Meanwhile, RLD’s Jayant Chaudhary had led an aggressive campaign in the constituency, which was once a Lok Dal bastion, and tied up with Azad Samaj Party’s Chandrashekhar Azad, who went door-to-door seeking votes for the alliance candidate.
On Thursday, Chaudhary tweeted that his party was headed towards the lucky number “nine” in UP, referring to the total number of seats held by his party in UP.
RLD headed towards lucky number 9!! #KhatauliBypoll
— Jayant Singh (@jayantrld) December 8, 2022
Speaking to ThePrint, Mirza Aamer Beg, professor, political science, Aligarh Muslim University, said that the BJP had won the seat in the past by galvanising the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalits, but was unable to do that this time.
“Since Dalits formed a significant number (of voters) in this seat, the result indicates that the BJP was unable to galvanise the Dalits in its favour,” he added.
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The ‘Azad factor’
While Jayant’s hard campaign did energise the party cadre on ground, experts attribute the win of the alliance candidate to the Azad factor.
“Khatauli does not have any particular dominant community group which can change the outcome of an election. Any win from here is usually not with a very high margin, but since the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was absent this time, it was the Dalit vote which became the deciding factor here,” Navneet Tyagi, a Khatauli resident, told ThePrint.
SP leaders too told ThePrint that in addition to Muslim and Jat votes, they also managed to draw Dalits voters, owing to Chandrashekhar’s appeal.
“We worked very hard on ground. Jayant ji campaigned hard. Chandrashekhar’s entry into the campaign helped bring the Dalit vote to our candidate, also because of the anger in the Tyagi community against the BJP,” said Pramod Tyagi, president of SP’s Khatauli unit.
Self-proclaimed BJP member Shrikant Tyagi was arrested earlier this year for allegedly verbally abusing a woman in his residential complex in Noida and is currently out on bail. His family members have claimed mistreatment at the hands of the police and spokespersons of the community have announced a “boycott” of the BJP in the Khatauli bypoll.
Tyagis, a community of Brahmin landowners, are mostly concentrated in five villages in Khatauli. Though a small part of the population, they wield considerable clout.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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