The Kairana bye-elections which is considered a fight between BJP and Mahagthbandhan led by Samajwadi with RlD, BSP and Congress being other constituents is turning into a Hindu-Muslim fight with political parties fearing that chasm will get wider with every passing day.
BJP has fielded Mriganka Singh, daughter of former BJP MP from Kairana whose death necessitated this bye-election while united opposition has fielded Tabassum, though a Samajwadi Party but will contest election on RlD ticket.
With two main candidates contesting election belonging to two different religion, this election has all of a sudden taken a communal turn. The controversy over Jinnah’s portrait in the neighbouring Aligarh Muslim University is also likely to influence this crucial bye-election result of which is likely to have a bearing not only in Uttar Pradesh but also in national politics.
Incidentally, leaders of both the parties blame each other for fanning communal passion saying that opponents are using religion to gain political mileage.
National spokesman of RlD Anil Dubey said that BJP is willfully trying to communalise this election. The people of this area are fed up with the mis-rule of Yogi and Modi governments. The payments of the cane growers have not been cleared so far. All the promises made during elections have fallen flat, he said.
“In this scenario the BJP is left with no other option other than to talk about Hindu and Muslim. This is a history that BJP won last assembly election when Prime Minister Narendra Modi raked up Shamshan-kabristan (cremation ground –graveyard) issue. People want development. People of this area still go to Panipat for work. They will not fall prey to the wily game plan of BJP this time,” Dubey said.
BJP general secretary and in-charge of western Uttar Pradesh Vijay Bahadur Pathak said that BJP is contesting election on the plank of `Sabka sath sabka vikas’. “This is the area which had witnessed large scale exodus because of machination by criminals. This government brought peace. The BJP government has worked on welfare of people and we are going to the masses with this message,” he said.
“The other parties know that they cannot match our good work and therefore are raking up emotive issues like Hindus and Muslims,” he said.
Why the issue like Hindu-Muslim divide taking round in Kairana because the parliamentary seat has 40 per cent minority votes and a large population of Gujjars, both Hindu and Muslim, numbering around 3 lakh
In the 2014 general election, Hukum Singh polled 5,65,909 votes to defeat SP candidate Nahid Hasan by a margin of around 2.3 lakh votes. Nahid’s uncle Kanwar Hasan, the BSP candidate, came third with around 1,60,000 votes. Kartar Bhadana of RlD, which fought in alliance with the Congress party (INC in graphic above), had notched around 42,000 votes.