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Voting for By-Polls in 10 States Begins; Will Modi Wave Continue?
NEW DELHI: Gujarat's Vadodara constituency vacated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among the 36 Lok Sabha and assembly seats across 10 states where by-elections are being held.
As polling began, the Prime Minister, in a tweet, urged voters "across the country today to vote in large numbers".
Here are the latest developments:
(1) PM Modi won Vadodara by nearly six lakh votes, which was the highest victory margin in the national election that saw his BJP winning a decisive mandate to rule the country. Mr Modi chose to retain Varanasi in UP, the second constituency that he won.
(2)Ranjan Ben Bhatta is the BJP candidate in Vadodara against Narendra Rawat of the Congress.
(3) MAINPURI: Tej Pratap Yadav, a Leeds University graduate, is the latest member of Mulayam Singh Yadav's family to enter Uttar Pradesh politics. He is the Samajwadi Party candidate in the by-elections to be held on Saturday for the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat.
The seat was vacated by Mulayam Singh after the national elections; the Samajwadi Party chief contested and had won two seats in Uttar Pradesh, which his party rules. Tej Pratap is the grandson of Mulayam's older brother Ratan Singh Yadav.
The 26-year-old refutes the charge that he is a product of dynastic politics and says he has been living in Saifai, the family village, for the last few years and is contesting "on popular demand."
Tej Pratap appears to be confident that he will win the seat that his grand uncle has won five times. He is dismissive of the BJP - which had won 71 of UP's 80 Lok Sabha seats in this year's national elections - saying that the people are "tired of its divisive politics."
"In the last bypolls, be it Bihar or Karnataka, everywhere the BJP has lost. This means that the popular sentiment accompanying the Lok Sabha elections has now died down and I am confident that the people of Uttar Pradesh will give their verdict in favor of the Samajwadi Party this time," said Mr Yadav in Mainpuri.
With an MBA from Amity University, he went on to do an MSc in Management from the UK. He has been part of the party's organisation in Saifai and was Mulayam's election agent during the Lok Sabha polls.
Today is the last day of campaigning for the by-elections for 11 assembly and 1 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. A resurgent BJP takes on the ruling Samajwadi Party, headed in the state by Tej Pratap's uncle Akhilesh Yadav, who faces criticism for not being able to check growing incidents of communal tension.
(4)NEW DELHI: A police case or FIR should be filed against the BJP's Yogi Adityanath for allegedly promoting religious enmity, the Election Commission said today. The BJP's star campaigner in Uttar Pradesh delivered a speech recently designed to incite communal tension, the Commission has found. It has also written to the controversial leader, warning him to be careful.
Adityanath, a senior priest and a 42-year-old law-maker from Uttar Pradesh, was also listed today along with other leaders from his party in another FIR for defying the state government to hold a rally in Lucknow on Wednesday evening.
Adityanath said that he went ahead with the public meeting despite being refused permission by local officials "to fight against the UP government's dictatorship and undemocratic ways." The rally has been filmed and will be scrutinized by the Election Commission to determine what action should be taken next.
On Saturday, Uttar Pradesh will hold by-elections for eleven assembly seats and one parliamentary constituency. Adityanath has also questioned the authenticity of a video that appeared online a few weeks ago that shows him making hate remarks against Muslims
In the national election in May, the BJP won 71 of the 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Critics claim the outstanding result was accomplished by Amit Shah through a strategy pivoted on stirring communal tensions for electoral advantage. Mr Shah, a top aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and now the BJP president, has denied those charges.
Yesterday, he was charge-sheeted by the UP police for allegedly making a hate speech ahead of the national elections in Muzaffarnagar, which was seared by deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in September.
In his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister called for an end to communal violence.
But ahead of the by-elections, local BJP leaders have been accused of trying to polarize voters by focusing on forced conversions and "love jihad" - what they describe as an Islamist strategy to convert Hindu women through seduction, marriage and money.
(5) By-polls are also being held to the Medak Lok Sabha seat vacated by Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao after he became the first Chief Minister of Telangana.
(6)Polling is also taking place in 13 assembly seats in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura and West Bengal.
(7)The votes will be counted on Tuesday.
(8)In by-polls last month in Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, the BJP's score was less than impressive. In Bihar, the alliance of former rivals Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, along with the Congress, scored an impressive six out of 10 assembly seats. The BJP won four, which rivals said reflected voters' disappointment in three months of the new government.
(9)The BJP also lost in Bellary in Karnataka, winning only one of three seats by a very modest margin.
(10)The next round of polling will be held on October 15, when two major Congress-ruled states, Maharashtra and Haryana, will vote for new assemblies. The verdict will be announced on October 19.
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