The outcome of the Kairana bye-election on Thursday will be crucial for both the ruling BJP and the fledgling unity of the opposition parties. If the joint opposition candidate in kairana of the Rashtriya lok Dal win the elections then it will not only be the hatrick of the opposition in less than three months. In March Samajwadi party candidate supported by the Bahujan Samaj party had won the by polls to the Gorakhpur and Phulpur lok Sabha seats.
The victory of the BJP in Kairana will show that the BJP has succeeded in breaking the losing streak this year in Uttar Pradesh lok Sabha by polls. The counting of votes for the Noorpur assembly constituency in UP will also be taken up on Thursday.
The Kairana seat fell vacant after the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh, whose daughter Mriganka Singh is now the party candidate. She is fighting Rashtriya lok Dal's Tabassum Hasan, who is also supported by the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. Just ahead of the polls, lok Dal candidate Kanwar Hasan, and brother in law of Tabassum Hasan, retired from the contest and joined RlD, further boosting her chances.
The opposition hopes that by consolidating the anti-BJP vote it will repeat its success in Gorakhpur and Phulpur bye-elections earlier in March this year when the ruling party suffered humiliating defeats.
Bye-elections were held for Gorakhpur and Phulpur in March as the seats fell vacant following the resignation by the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya after both were elected to legislative council .The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has campaigned hard for Kairana.
The BJP hopes to win in Kairana and send a strong message to voters, party workers as well as the opposition parties that the drubbing it got in Gorakhpur and Phulpur bye-elections was an aberration – and that it is very much a force to reckon with in western UP. The Kairana election is the fourth lok Sabha bye-election in the state since 2014.Apart from Gorakhpur and Phulpur, a bye-election was also held in Mainpuri in 2014.
Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav had resigned from Mainpuri after deciding to represent Azamgarh, the second constituency from which he won in 2014. SP's Tej Pratap Singh Yadav, who is related to him, defeated the BJP there in that bye-election, retaining the seat for his party.
