[ad_1]
On Thursday, when the electronic voting machines (EVMs) start revealing the electorate’s mood in Uttar Pradesh, some assembly seats would be more in focus.
Call it plain coincidence or just a good omen, these seats are considered lucky as the winner here has mostly been from the party that forms the government.
Some assembly segments are said to enjoy this ‘lucky omen’ tag for long, some have acquired it over the last few elections, but the narrative here is keenly followed by political observers and curious bystanders alike.
Take Alapur assembly segment of Ambedkarnagar for instance. Previously known as Jahangirganj, this constituency from where Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati was a lawmaker once, has been electing lawmakers from the ruling side since 2007 – when UP’s electorate started giving majority verdicts. Since 2007, when BSP came to power, this constituency has elected lawmakers from Samajwadi Party in 2012 and Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017, all lawmakers who were from the party that eventually won the elections.
Kasganj assembly seat too, which was earlier represented by the former chief minister and BJP stalwart late Kalyan Singh, has been an indicator of which way the wind was blowing during elections.
This assembly segment has on more than 10 occasions elected a lawmaker from the party that ruled the state. Kasganj has been synonymous with Kalyan Singh, and a proposal to rename the district as ‘Kalyan Nagar’ is currently under consideration.
Kasganj zila panchayat adhyaksh (district panchayat chief) Ratnesh Kashyap admitted that the assembly seat has been lucky for the party in power. “Somehow, the results here indicate the popular mood,” Kashyap said. Various other assembly segments in Basti, Sultanpur, Bulandshahr and Meerut have been known to be lucky for the party that eventually gets people’s mandate.
“There are these seats, like Hastinapur, a reserved seat in Meerut, which is known to indicate the general trend elsewhere. These seats are considered a lucky omen for the party that eventually wins. Let us see what happens this time,” said prof Sudhir Panwar, who hails from the west UP region. The Hastinapur assembly seat, it is said, has since the 1950s been electing the candidate of a party that forms the government – a claim that couldn’t be verified though there are many like prof Panwar, who admit that Hastinapur seat is quite popular in the region due to its unique record.
Apart from these seats, the other seats whose results would be followed for different reasons include ones from where heavyweights are contesting — Gorakhpur (urban) assembly seat and Karhal seat in Mainpuri from where both, chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, are contesting their first assembly elections. Both have been Lok Sabha MPs for several terms. The Sirathu assembly seat in Kaushambi from where deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya is contesting is also a hot seat, as is Fazilnagar assembly segment in Kushinagar from where former labour minister in Yogi Adityanath government, Swami Prasad Maurya, is contesting on the Samajwadi Party ticket.
“It will be interesting to see how seats like Nakur and Ghosi from where the other two Yogi Adityanath ministers — Dharam Singh Saini and Dara Singh Chauhan — who rebelled along with Swami Prasad Maurya and contested on SP ticket, fare. The BJP had put up an intense campaign on these seats,” said AP Tiwari, a political observer.
“In fact, not just them, there were many others who kept crossing sides till the last moment. It would be an interesting political study to see how people, who made these last-minute switches fare. And, in a way, they will also convey the common sentiment on the subject,” he added.
[ad_2]
Source link