Gearing up for the urban local body election slated next month-perhaps the last big one before the 2019 high-stake general election, the state BJP in-charge Shyam Jaju and the state party president Ajay Bhatt inaugurated the offices of the party’s mayoral candidates from Haridwar and Shivalik Nagar Anu Kakkar and Rajeev Sharma on Tuesday. The inauguration marked the saffron party’s poll campaigning with as many as 60 BJP councillors along with their supporters besides the party leaders, big and small, turning up with hordes of their followers, throwing traffic out of gear on many of the city roads. However, the model code of conduct in force, the district police and the administration removed the BJP flags which the party workers had placed at the road dividers in Rishikul in a bid to drape the city’s main areas saffron.
The commuters were, however, at the receiving end of the saffron show of strength as hundreds of party workers out on the roads on e-rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and two-wheelers threw traffic haywire on the bustling old Ranipur Mod. A huge congestion ensued around 1 pm and it dragged for hours.
Aware of the people’s disenchantment with the performance of the BJP-led civic board, the Urban Development Minister Madan Kaushik passed the buck of the failure to rise up to the developmental expectation to the then Congress Government. The expected level of development had not happened over the past five years because of the non-cooperation of the then Congress Government in the State, he said. At the same time, he flaunted the string of the achievements which are claimed to have happened over the past one year with BJP at the helm. He appealed to the people to make Haridwar free of Congress to speed up development.
His focus was trained on the upcoming ring road in the city, which he said would transform the face of Haridwar. “Congress used to make fun of the ring road,” he said. He also cited the underground electricity line and gas pipeline being laid in the city as an achievement on his part. The Rs 2000 crore project has been approved, he added.
Speaking to The Pioneer, Shyam Jaju said that his party had won five out of six mayoral seats when Congress was ruling in the Centre and the State. “BJP swept the Lok Sabha election 2014 and won a landslide in the Assembly poll 2017. The figures speak of the confidence the people have in the party. The same trend would repeat during the urban local body polls,” he said.
