The Kanpur Lok Sabha constituency, which has over 16 lakh eligible voters, will go to polls on Monday with largely a two-way contest between the BJP and the Congress for this crucial seat. While Congress leader and former Union Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal is vying to regain this crucial seat he lost to sitting BJP MP MM Joshi in 2014, BJP candidate Satyadev Pachauri is hoping to win it, riding on what he claims a “bigger Modi wave” this time.
Though there is a seething resentment against party veteran Joshi, a section of voters and Pachauri claimed that “national security” was the “biggest issue” in this elections and not local issues.
Joshi had defeated Jaiswal in 2014 with a margin of 2,22,946 votes and people had several expectations from him, including finishing of the long-stalled COD Flyover project and revival of the famous Lal Imli mill. Neeraj Rastogi, a cloth merchant who lives in Mall Road area, said, “People are unhappy with Joshiji. We all respect him as a senior leader, but as an MP he never really talked to us these five years. We are not unhappy that he is not fighting the elections.”
Vivek Shukla, a sweet shop owner and Abdul Gani, an autorickshaw driver also claimed that “nothing really happened” during Joshi’s tenure. Pachauri, a Cabinet Minister in the Yogi Adityanath Government, however, countered that a “lot of work” happened during Joshi’s tenure and that if he is elected this time, he would ensure that COD flyover gets completed in one year of his assuming office.
“It is poll time and ‘netas’ will make big promises, I am not sure how much of that would be translated to reality in that promised time,” said Rastogi, who often takes this semi-finished flyover for travelling out of Kanpur.