New Delhi, Nov 12: The Firozabad Lok Sabha seat — where voter turnout jumped to 53 per cent from 48 per cent in May, and where Dimple Yadav suffered a humiliating defeat — reflects the deep challenge SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav faces in Uttar Pradesh.
The SP lost about 60,000 votes in less than six months at the seat. The Congress improved its vote tally from a little above 6,000 in the general elections to over 3 lakh in the byelection. The SP also failed to win Bharthana and Etawah, both Mulayam Singh’s bases.
Dimple led Congress candidate Raj Babbar in three of the five Assembly segments of Firozabad Lok Sabha seat — Jasrana, Sirsaganj and Shikohabad. But nowhere was he very far behind her.
On the other hand, in the two Assembly segments that he led — Tundla and Firozabad — the SP candidate was all but decimated. Not only did these two segments make up for Babbar’s second-best show elsewhere, they powered him to victory by a massive overall margin of 85,000 votes.
Babbar won Firozabad segment by over 71,000 votes, Tundla by over 40,000. In Shikohabad by contrast, Dimple scraped through by less than 1,500 votes. She won Jasrana by 3,000, and Sirsaganj by 12,000. All three segments have been traditional strongholds of the Yadav family.
At all five Assembly segments, the SP polled fewer votes than in May, when Mulayam’s son — and Dimple’s husband — Akhilesh contested and won. Babbar, on the other hand, brought about a complete turnaround in the Congress tally.
Consider this:
* In Firozabad Assembly segment, Congress votes went up from 944 in May to 93,563 in November; SP votes went down from 39,221 to 21,951.
* In Tundla, Congress votes went up from 2,646 to 76,542; SP fell from 48,345 to 36,539.
* In Sirsaganj, Congress went from 713 to 42,663; SP fell from 62,825 to 54,223.
*In Shikohabad, Congress went from 1,066 to 51,191; SP from 61,435 to 52,485.
* In Jasrana, Congress went from 971 to 48,769; SP from 75,175 to 61,879.
The decline came despite campaigning by Kalyan Singh among his Lodh Rajput supporters, who constitute a substantial vote base. The SP had also managed, at the last minute, the support of Ajit Singh’s RLD, and Ajit’s son Jayant Chaudhary campaigned for Dimple in Tundla, a segment with many Jat voters.
The Firozabad result also has a message for the BJP, whose votes in the entire Lok Sabha constituency plummeted from over one lakh in May to less than 10,000 in November — within a span of six months. The BJP did not even cross 2,500 votes in any of the Assembly segments in Firozabad.
–Agencies