HISAR BYPOLLAmitabh Shukla / Hisar
The political heat and dust has settled down and all the players have retired after a hectic electoral campaign for the most eagerly watched by-election in recent decades. The outcome of Hisar has the potential to change the way politics is played out in Haryana and the country in the run-up to the 2014 elections.
Voters of the nine Assembly segments, falling in the constituency, would line up in the morning on Thursday and are set to create an electoral history, whichever way they vote.
Being held in the shadows of the anti-graft movements of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev and the UPA government facing a crisis in credibility due to scams and ministers and MPs finding a new home in Tihar Jail, the election would be a sort of mid-term appraisal of the Manmohan Singh government.
“We are treating it as a referendum for the Jan Lokpal Bill,” said Arvind Kejriwal of Team Anna in a series of meetings addressed over a week. He loudly proclaims, “Congress ka haath, bhrashtachar ke sath” (The hand of Congress is with the corrupt) and appeals the voters to teach Congress a lesson of its life by defeating it so badly that it is forced to bring the Lokpal bill in the next session of Parliament.
While Team Anna hogged the limelight in Hisar, Team Baba (Ramdev) worked silently. The Bharat Swabhiman Trust of the Baba, who has a considerable following here, has appealed the voters to go out in huge numbers and vote against black money. Team Baba has termed their campaign as “voter awareness programme” but the message is not lost as all the issues which the saffron clad Baba raised during his protest in Ramlila Maidan in Delhi are being raised and clearly one party is at the receiving end - Congress.
Team Baba does not have a face here but the collective strength and Yoga training and Ayurveda centres which have mushroomed here, are providing a new dimension as they have become a potent tool to expand Ramdev’s philosophy and there is only one villain, the ruling party in the Centre which “rained lathis” on the peaceful satyagrahis singing Bhajans and doing kirtan in Delhi leading to the death of a follower, a fellow Haryanvi and that too a woman.
As both Kejriwal and Baba belong to Haryana, their appeal has found sympathetic response from the people in this belt which is obviously not a Congress stronghold. Hisar was the only seat in the state which the Congress lost in the last Lok Sabha elections to no other than Bhajan Lal, whose son Kuldeep Bishnoi is the Haryana Janhit Congress-BJP candidate. Sympathy factor, alliance with BJP, clean image compared to rivals, campaign of Team Anna and Team Baba and polarisation of non-Jat votes has made Bishnoi a favourite.
As the electorate is largely looking at the by-election with a national perspective rather than a narrow, regional or caste perspective, Indian National Lok Dal candidate Ajay Chautala seems to have lost out here. The party is focusing on state level issues without a vision for the future, something which is not being appreciated in a high pitch election at which the nation is watching.
Congress is fighting with its hand tied at its back. Battling anti-incumbency of almost seven years in the state, suffering crisis at the national level due to a range of issues from corruption to infighting amongst ministers to the mishandling of the Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev protest, the staunchest party supporters do not see a chance in this election. It came third in the 2009 polls, the candidate Jai Prakash is seen as “weak” and even the illegal betting trade for the result has written off the party and said it would be a distant third. (13.10.2011)
http://dailypioneer.com/nation/12838-hisar-poll-to-feel-nations-mood.html
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