Land Act, 1950 Domicile Certificate, Agniveer Yojana, copying, paper leak and involvement of BJP leader’s son in the brutal murder of Ankita Bhandari had no impact on Uttarakhand elections.
The losers
Saffron party Bharatiya Janata Party has scored a hat-trick in Uttarakhand this time and has clearly sent the message that Hindu polarization and Uniform Civil Code, along with the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has worked well in this Himalayan state. Bharatiya Janata Party’s massive victory in Uttarakhand is a record of sorts in this Himalayan state, where earlier there was a change after every election, assembly or parliament.
It seems that unemployment, corruption, skyrocketing inflation, illegal mining, countless attacks on humans by man-eaters, increasing accidents, UKSSSC paper leak, Agniveer Yojana, fraud scams, land law, 1950 Domicile Certificate, copying and paper leaks and Ankita Bhandari Issues like the involvement of a BJP leader’s son in her brutal murder etc. have had no impact on the voters who directly cast their votes for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, free delivery of Ration to every household was also one of the prominent reasons.
Another reason was that the Ram temple and propagation of Hindu-Muslim division on various pretexts, one being the campaign of demolishing the fake graves of minority communities built on government lands exclusively also aroused the Hindu sentiments .
However, in Uttar Pradesh, where the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya was undertaken with so much fanfare and widespread publicity, Hindu polarization did not work with the Samajwadi Party and the Congress overtaking the BJP, securing a historic victory in 43 parliamentary seats.
The main reason behind this embarrassing defeat is the internal strife and factionalism within the Congress, followed by the late declaration of party candidates and freezing of the accounts of the Congress party by the Income Tax department and Enforcement Directorate. The state Congress leaders had become so morally weak that they surrendered and refused to contest the elections against the BJP.
Senior Congress leaders Harish Rawat, Yashpal Arya and Pritam Singh are among those who pulled out of the race. As a result, Congress was delayed in announcing its candidates, while BJP declared its candidature much earlier that gave it a tremendous opportunity to campaign quite in advance and make their inroads in every section of the society.
The choice of Congress candidates in Uttarakhand was also not suitable. Instead of declaring Shri Jot Singh Gunsola as the candidate from Tehri Garhwal, the party leadership could have supported UKD’s Bobby Panwar who brought huge support behind him. Despite the fact that Bobby Pawar is resourceless and a political novice, he got more than 1.5 lakh votes, but his number of supporters is very high.
In Pauri Garhwal, it could have agreed to give ticket to UKD’s Ashutosh Negi who was fighting on the Ankita Bhandari case and is a tireless fighter. But the Congress high command neither made any effort to bring the UKD candidates into its fold nor to extend its support to them, leading to triangular or multiple cornered contests in many seats, such as Pauri Garhwal, Tehri Garhwal and Haridwar seat leading to division of votes benefiting the saffron party.
The controversial issue is that the Congress party, which was once a formidable political force in Uttarakhand and has ruled here several times, is repeatedly losing parliamentary elections, its third defeat in the parliament elections in a row and also losing the assembly election in 2022 for the second time breaking the myth of change in governments by Congress n BJP alternatively.
If the Congress really wants to improve its performance in Uttarakhand, it will have to give up factionalism, activate its leaders and workers at the decentralized level and inculcate in its workforce the feeling of working at the grassroots level instead of playing comfort politics by staying in Dehradun.
Apart from this the Uttarakhand Congress will have to strengthen its youth, students and women wings like Youth Congress, NSUI and Mahila Congress including the Sewa Dal which are almost defunct. These frontal organisations are the main backbone of the main party organisation who should go into colleges and universities with their programmes related to unemployment, issues against social evils like rampant prevalent of liquor in Uttarakhand spoiling every family and also playing with the health of the people in a vast scale. Apart from this , they should take up various burning issues of inadequate health n medical facilities, deteriorating standards of education in government schools, massive migration, illegal mining, deteriorating law and order situation in the state and for improving the lot of the people. There should also be hectic debates on the increasing fiscal deficit of the state including issues related to paper leaks, massive copy scams as well as existing corruption at every level.
