With the voters sealing the fate of 195 candidates including 13 for the post of mayor and 182 for councillors’ post on the day of voting here on Sunday, prestige of many leaders particularly State Finance Minister and MlA from Haldwani Indira Hridayesh is also at stake.
Being an MlA from this Haldwani Assembly constituency, Hridayesh extensively campaigned for the party candidate for the mayor post of Haldwani city Hemant Bagarwal. More so, when the Congress party did not reach a consensus on the mayoral
candidate for the municipal corporation of Haldwani (MCH), she handpicked Bagwarla ignoring candidatures of many other senior party leaders for this seat.
Though many a rebel candidates later gave up their political ambitions showing their solidarity with the party, as the political analysts here believe, success of the party in these civic elections depends on the muslim votes to a large extent Out of nearly one lakh voters in the MCH, over 25 per cent of the total voters belong to the Muslim community.
But, given a kind of triangle fight for the mayoral post of Haldwani city among the Congress, the BJP and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the MCH, it is difficult to say in whose favour the sizeable chunk of the muslim voters would vote, as the people here say.
Interestingly, after some alleged controversial statements made by the State Finance Minister to influence the voters as the BJP earlier alleged, hopes of rival parties like the SP and the BJP have also gone up.
“As far as the Muslim votes are concerned the main fight is between the BJP and the SP, said senior BJP leader and former vice-chairman of the State minority commission Mazhar Naeem Nawab. Therefore, we need not to be worried about the Congress,” he added.
Keeping in view the feedback that they got from the voters, people here were of the view that the SP’s fighting the civic elections will only damage the Congress Party’s winning prospects in these civic elections. However, it will be clear who will emerge victories in these civic polls only on Tuesday, April 30 when the counting of votes would take place.
There are a total 13 candidates in the fray for the post of mayor of Haldwani city, while a total 182 candidates contested the civic elections for the 25 wards of the MCH.