Even in the defeat, the BJP found a reason to smile as it got more votes in Noorpur Assembly segment as compared to 2017 polls while in Kairana, the party did well in patches indicating counter polarization in the bypolls despite a united opposition.
The biggest solace for the BJP is that Kairana had traditionally never been a BJP seat. The party did not win this seat even in the days of Ram temple stir. It held it for a brief period in 1998 and then Hukum Singh won it in 2014. In fact, the seat firmly remained with the BSP and RlD since from to 2014.
In 2014, the BJP got slightly more than 50 per cent vote with the SP getting 30, BSP 14.33 and RlD 3.81 per cent votes. In this bypoll, the BSP, SP and RlD combined together and got slightly more than BJP’s vote share of 47 per cent.
In the Kairana bypoll, BJP candidate Mriganka Singh won from two Assembly segments but lost in the remaining three. Singh won from Shamli and Kairana segments but lost from Thana Bhawan in Shamli and Nakur and Gangoh segments in Saharanpur.
Nakur and Gangoh were the segments where 68 booths went to repolls, which also turned the tables against the BJP.
Similarly in Noorpur Assembly seat, the BJP candidate received 10,000 more votes than the 2017 poll. Coming together of opposition parties this time clearly meant a momentum in favour of them. Keeping this in mind, the BJP could console itself by the margin of loss at Kairana which was around 44,000 votes. The bypoll saw around 55 percent poll as compared to 73 per cent last time, indicating that the BJP was able to preserve its vote share to an extent.
Similarly in Noorpur Assembly bypoll, the BJP, despite losing the poll, fared well as compared to 2017. The seat was created post delimitation in 2008.
In the first elections in 2012, BJP’s lokendra Singh won the seat by securing almost 27 per cent votes with BSP coming second with 24 per cent and SP almost 20 per cent. This meant that the BJP stood nowhere against the joint strength of BSP and SP.
In 2017, the BJP won with 79,000 votes against SP’s 66,000 and BSP’s 45000 votes. But in 2018 bypolls, the BJP got 10,000 more votes but lost the election by around 5600 votes.
It is an achievement for the BJP in Noorpur as despite low voter turnout there was an increase in BJP’s vote share as compared to 2017. The increase is only due to counter polarisation in favour of BJP.
State BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey said in lucknow on Friday that candidates fared well in the bypolls though results were not in the party’s favour. “We will sit and analyse our weakness so that in the coming 2019 polls, it could be rectified,” he said.