LS By-polls: BJP Loses Kairana Too as Opposition Puts All Its Might Behind RLD Candidate

The RLD candidate won by over 55,000 votes

Kairana By-election Result: RLD Candidate Tabassum Hasan — Tabassum Hassan of the RLD wins against BJP

New Delhi, May 31: It could be the BJP’s worst nightmare; the party lost the Kairana by-poll as well. Coming after March’s humiliating defeat from Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the LS seats of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya, Kairana defeat was something the BJP must be wanting to wish away. It also shows the Opposition in a new, united avatar, a force the saffron party would have to reckon with in the 2019 general elections. (Watch Live Updates of By-polls Here)

Highlights

The win has pushed Ajit Singh's RLD back in the limelight.
Both Jats and Muslims did not choose BJP over their traditional parties.

The Opposition-backed Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidate Tabassum Hasan won against the BJP’s Mriganka Singh who is the daughter of the party MP Hukum Singh who passed away early this year, necessitating these elections in Kairana.

Hasan was supported by the Congress, Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party and she defeated her Singh by over 55,000 votes. Political analysts were seeing the Kairana by-poll as the testing ground for the Opposition unity against the saffron surge.

With Kairana, RLD has also been resurrected. The party was relegated to the fringes of the regional politics by the BJP in 2014 when Ajit Singh couldn’t retain his own Baghpat seat. The sensitive western UP region has also been in national news for all the wrong reasons. It shot into limelight when sitting MP Hukum Singh raised the issue of exodus of Hindu families following communal tension. In fact, it turned into one of the poll issues for 2017 Assembly elections.

Hassan’s win has made it obvious that what led to a repeat of March by-poll’s loss of face for the BJP was its rejection by both Jats and Muslims. While the former would anyway side with a traditional Jat party, like the RLD, the latter, who form a sizeable population in the region, are traditional Congress or Samajwadi Party voters. Jats are seen as kingmakers in Kairana and their support to a united Opposition leader like Hassan spelt a success story whose end seemed written way before the beginning.