Harish Rawat warns Congressmen to be conscious and alert as its candidates are winning on all seats

Tomorrow is 19 April and Uttarakhand will go to polls in all the five parliamentary constituencies.

The ruling political dispensation BJP has been winning on all the seats since a decade. The saffron party seems to be on a higher side in Uttarakhand after prime minister Narendra Modi held massive public meetings at Rishikesh and Rudrapur, Yogi Adityanath, union home minister Amit Shah, Defence minister Rajnath Singh and national BJP chief Nadda too holding several meetings to woo the electorates.

The BJP leadership also engineered defection from Congress to its fold of several local leaders, former MLAs , a sitting MLA from Badrinath and several defeated candidates.

On the other side the Congress party could only bring Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at Roorkie and Ram Nagar, Nainital , the plain areas and no other national leader including Rahul Gandhi and its national chief Mallikarjun Kharge addressed any public meeting.

Moreover, there is tremendous shortage of budget for the party candidates as the account of the central party has been seized with heavy taxes imposed on it in connection with several discrepancies in its party account etc.

The BJP high command has this time cut the ticket of Tirath Singh Rawat, former CM and sitting MP from Pauri Garhwal and former CM Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, sitting MP from Haridwar to kill the prevailing anti incumbency against them.

Though on Pauri Garhwal seat and Tehri Garhwal there seems to be a tough fight between the Congress candidate Ganesh Godiyal and BJP’s high profile candidate Anil Baluni, the UKD candidate Bobby Panwar is also giving a tough fight to BJP’s sitting MP RajyaLakshmi. However, on two seats, Haridwar and Nainital, the BJP candidates are winning for sure as in Haridwar the Congress vote of minorities, dalits and farmers are splitting between Congress candidate Virendra Rawat, Umesh Kumar ( independent) and the BSP candidates with BJP having its vote of majority community intact including dalit votes that are polarised also going into its fold. In Tehri Garhwal the anti Maharani vote is being divided between UKD’s Bobby Panwar and Congress candidate Jot Singh Ginsola. However, in Nanital seat it is a cakewalk for the former union state minister Ajay Bhatt as Congress candidate Prakash Joshi’s candidature was declared quite late and is also not that popular or have made inroads into Nainital Parliamentary constituency.

On Almora Reserve seat the fight between the sitting MP Ajay Tamata n former union state minister Ajay Tamata and Congress’s Pradeep Tamta ( former LS and RS MP) is neck to neck.

However, a recent survey gives Congress an edge on this seat. According to a local survey, the Congress MP Pradeep Tamta is surprisingly getting 77 % votes while Ajay Tamata is acknowledging 23% votes. Sounds unusual.

Meanwhile the former CM of Uttarakhand Harish Rawat who is actively campaigning for his son Virendra Rawat is stay put in Haridwar and not campaigning elsewhere.

However, he claims that Congress is winning on all the the five parliamentary seats but there is the need for Congressmen to be alert, conscious and clever as the ruling party BJP will deploy all the ways and means to capture victory on these seats. According a BJP leader Rawat’s statement sounds ridiculous as his son is losing from Haridwar for sure.

In a Facebook post also posted on social media platform X as well, former Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat has written in Hindi : The Congress party needs to remain conscious/ alert 24×7 like an alert “Pehrua”. The Congress party candidates’ winning possibility have enhanced on all the five parliamentary constituencies. The apprehensive or defensive BJP has now taken a decision to use money, liquor and muscle power. The BJP is considering the night of 17 and 18 as ( KATL KI RAAT) and has therefore tremendously activated its liquor machinery and money power. I have come to know that the services of an advocate of Haridwar who is expert in these tactics are being sought, specifically. Some of the people ” Jhola Chaap log”, have been given the responsibilities to distribute liquor and money in every assembly constituency. If you find somebody as non political in nature in your locality of any organisation , you come to the point that he or she is definitely distributing money to the electorates etc. You need to register your complaint in this regard to the election commission wrote Rawat on his social media post.

What is important to note in the ongoing election in Uttarakhand is while the BJP is solely banking on the Ram Temple , Uniform Civil Code issues , free distribution of 5 kg of free ration to each member of every family and Modi charisma including developmental model of the double engine BJP government , the opposition candidates are raising the issues of massive unemployment, massive cheating scam of UKSSC, Agniveer, old pension scheme, backdoor employment through BJP leaders n Assembly speakers, Subsidence of Joshimath holy town, absolute corruption in the state, skyrocketing inflation during the last ten years, unfriendly development at the cost of state’s environmental degradation, massive corruption through electoral bonds etc.

But despite all this the way polarisation through Ram temple, free ration distribution, Modi charisma and impact of UCC is being propagated and the ruling party candidates allegedly having no dearth of money, muscle and resources it seems that the saffron party is still having its say.

The attendance in various public meetings of VIPs of the ruling party if is the barometer of the votes being translated into victories than in two seats BJP faces challenges while on three seats its a cake walk. However, there are prediction of BJP leading in all five seats with EVM of the most suspicious factors from the side of the opposition.