Bypoll a shot in the arm for Mayawati
November 10th, 2009 - 10:26 pm ICT by IANS -
Lucknow, Nov 10 (IANS) While jolting Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam
Singh Yadav, the results Tuesday of bypolls to one Lok Sabha and 11
state assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh have come as a shot in the arm
for Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo and Chief Minister Mayawati.
The Congress may have received a boost by registering a landslide
victory on the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat, as also by winning the
Lucknow (West) assembly seat, besides emerging as the second biggest
party in three constituencies.
Yet, it also lost hold over two seats.
BSP, that had won three of the four by-elections held earlier in
August, would now take its tally to an all-time high of 227 seats in
the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly.
It was not just the ruling party's victory on as many as nine of the
11 assembly seats that had given Mayawati reason to revel. What was
more significant was that her biggest adversary Mulayam's SP was
reduced to nought.
On the other hand, the ruling party that had only four of these 11
seats in its kitty at the beginning of the bypoll, could boast of
taking its count way ahead.
Neither could the Samajwadi Party retain the three seats it held
earlier, nor could the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) keep its hold over
the lone seat (Lucknow-West), held by its veteran Lalji Tandon for
years.
While SP ostensibly lost its hold over three seats - Bhartana, Etawah
and Isauli - to BSP, it effectively lost five. Powayan and Hainsar
Bazar - won by SP in 2007 - had fallen vacant following resignations
by the SP incumbents, who switched sides to BSP.
What had clearly given a devastating blow to Mulayam were his party's
shocking reverses in his personal political bastion. Apart from the
fact that his daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav lost very badly to the high
profile filmstar-turned-Congressman Raj Babbar, the SP nominee lost
the Bhartana seat also which Mulayam had himself won in 2007. The SP
chief vacated the seat after his election to the Lok Sabha earlier
this year.
For the Congress, it was a mixed bag. Even though Congress had found
some reason to rejoice, the fact remains that it had also lost two key
seats earlier held by its prominent leaders R.P.N. Singh and Pradeep
Jain, who were not very long ago named ministers in the Mamnohan Singh
government.
While R.P.N. Singh had vacated the Padrauna seat after his election to
the Lok Sabha, Pradeep Jain was earlier the party MLA from Jhansi.
What was perhaps even more disheartening for the Congress was that it
also lost quite badly in Powayan, that was entrusted under the charge
of yet another union minister Jitin Prasada, who hails from
Shahjahanpur in the vicinity.
BJP's case was even worse as it failed to figure anywhere, other than
Lucknow, at the number two position. The loss of Lucknow (West) was
colossal for the party in many ways. The seat had been the
pocket-borough of BJP veteran Lalji Tandon, who has now replaced
former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as the party MP from here.
And Amit Puri, the party nominee had taken a plunge into the fray with
Vajpayee's blessings.
While a top state BJP leader attributed the party's poor performance
to "rampant infighting", SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary refused to
accept the bypoll results as the party's rout.
"We have suffered reverses essentially on account of gross misuse of
government machinery by the ruling party; yet, netaji Mulayam Singh
Yadav proposes to shortly hold an open house to find out other reasons
for such performance by the party," he said.
While Mayawati was not available for comment, one of her close aides
told IANS: "The poll results were a referendum on the performance of
the two-and-a-half-year-old BSP government, that had devoted its
energies only towards the development of the state."
He said: "It also shows how the people of the state have rejected all
other parties."
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