Uttarakhand Assembly elections: Rebellion and opponent make Khanduri sweat

KOTDWAR: Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, this dusty town is making BJP sweat in peak winter. The party has had to requisition its Muslim face Shahnawaz Husain to work on the 6,000-odd voters of his community while Ravi Shankar Prasad came and launched a diatribe against the Congress in a meeting at a wedding hall.

Husain uploaded the video of his meeting on a popular site to garner support of youngsters and Prasad is his usual confident self.

Kotdwar is no ordinary election ground. Chief minister B C Khanduri is the BJP candidate here. His earlier constituency of Dhumakot has ceased to exist after delimitation. Kotdwar is also the place where the script has gone horribly wrong for BJP.

First, sitting MLA Shailendra Singh Rawat was made to sit out in favour of Khanduri but was promised nothing in return. For a man from a nearby village , becoming MLA was the ultimate success. And now the fear of being left out with empty hands has antagonized his supporters no end.

Rawat told TOI, “Yes, my supporters were very upset that I was denied ticket. I have done a lot of work here.” He admitted that he was hurt earlier but now has taken it as fate. “Waqt se pehle aur kismat se zyada kisi ko nahin milta,” he said with a wry smile, hurt written all over his face. Rawat’s highvoltage speech along with Prasad, replete with talk of tyag (sacrifice) for the party is not evident when one talks to him privately.

After the wedding hall meeting, a group of young BJP supporters are candid enough to admit that Rawat’s rebellion and Congress propaganda of Khanduri having not done anything in Dhumakot has made the CM’s position precarious .

One of them said Rawat, immensely popular, was still working against Khanduri. Over phone, Hussain explained that Kotdwar seat “phansi hui thi” (seat was stuck). But he claimed his meeting with Muslims had helped and Khanduri would romp home.

On the other hand, Congress has been more decisive in selecting its candidate in Surendra Singh Negi, a known face, with his hand firmly on the caste calculus. The electorate of nearly 85,000 is dominated by Brahmins and Thakurs with Muslims and the trading community in decisive numbers.

In the meeting of traders, it became clear that while the traditional trading community would be with BJP, traders from the hills have decided to back Negi.