Decisiveness that the voters of the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar parliamentary constituency have shown by exercising their franchise in a big way, will also set the future course of politics of three State Cabinet Ministers including Yashpal Arya, Indira Hardiyesh and Harish Chandra Durgapal whose respective Assembly constituencies belong to the same lok Sabha seat.
All the aforesaid State Cabinet Ministers come from the same political background of the Congress party, though regional politics led to ouster of State Cabinet Minister Harish Chandra Durgapal from the Congress party during the State Assembly elections in 2012 when he had to fight the Assembly election from the lalkuan Assembly constituency as an independent candidate.
The interesting fact is that despite his expulsion from the Congress party in 2012, Durgapl extensively campaigned in his Assembly constituency for the Congress party candidate KC Singh Baba till the last day of campaigning. Issues like demand for regularisation of unauthorised colonies is one of the major concerns of the lalkuan assembly constituency, yet Durgapal urged the voters to support the Congress party, saying the Congress party has always worked for all round development. “So keeping in view different welfare schemes launched by the Congress led Central and State Governments, I appealed to the voters to support Congress candidate,” KC Singh Baba, Durgapal said.
It may be recalled that along with State Cabinet Minister and MlA from Haldwani Assembly constituency Indira Hardiyesh, Durgapl was also instrumental in bringing in veteran Congress leader N D Tiwari to campaign for Congress candidate K C Singh Baba in different parts of the aforesaid parliamentary constituency particularly in Haldwani and Bindukhatta area in lalkuan during election campaign
period.
However, whether it was the Modi wave or some other factors, the poll percentage that was registered about
58 per cent in the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar parliamentary seat's Nainital district in 2009 lok Sabha elections, reached over 68 per cent in 2014 polls, as the figures
provided by the District Election Office suggest.
It is worth mention here is that whereas the voting percentage has shown a reasonable improvement in these elections, there has been rather no improvement even in the basic service of this parliamentary constituency. Issues related to poor drinking water services in areas like Haldwani which is considered as commercial capital of Kumaon continues to remain grim, though MlA from Haldwani Indira Hardiyesh claims to have taken a number of steps to improve the state of the basic services like the poor drinking water services.
However, the voter turnout in the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar parliamentary seat's Udham Singh Nagar district remained a bit higher than that of the Nainital district i.e. about 72 per cent in these general elections.
The fact of the matter is State Cabinet Minister and MlA from Bazpur Yashpal Arya's home town also falls in the Haldwani assembly
constituency. Though he campaigned in many parts of the state for his party, his appearance to this region is rare, people here allegedly said.
However, among other factors, farmers' problems like delay in payment of cane farmers' dues is a major concerns that the Bazpur Assembly constituency is facing along with some other sugarcane producing areas of Uttarakhand's Teri region. But the voting percentage of Bazpur assembly constituency also remained quite impressive i.e. about 73 per cent. But the area specific problem like delay in
clearance of cane farmers' dues remain same.
So in this case it is to be seen whether the increased voter turnout in these different Assembly segments has voted in support of the ruling party whose Ministers' prestige is at stake or otherwise, it will be cleared only on May 16 now.