It’s Batra vs Jain for ticket in BJP, Cong may benefit

Sandeep Rawat

Tribune News Service

Haridwar, January 11

The major area of Roorkee falls in the rural segment and issues related with farmers dominate every elections. After the creation of Uttarakhand, Roorkee was made an Assembly seat. It has been a BJP stronghold. Suresh Chand Jain had won on the BJP ticket twice. In the 2002 elections, Jain defeated Congress candidate Manohar Lal Sharma by 3,751 votes while in the 2007 elections he defeated Congress candidate Furkan Ahmed by 6,000 odd votes.

In the 2012 elections, Congress candidate Pradeep Batra, who was then Municipal Committee chairperson, defeated him by 801 votes. Now, it’s a peculiar situation as Pradeep Batra along with nine other Congress legislators had joined the BJP.

Since then Batra has been claiming that BJP national president Amit Shah has assured him of the party ticket from Roorkee, upsetting Jain. Both Jain and Batra have been reaching out to voters for the past six months staking their claim to the party ticket. It will not be an easy task for the BJP candidates this time as Chief Minister Harish Rawat has said that he will ensure all Congress rebels, who have joined the BJP, are defeated in the coming Assembly elections.

Batra told The Tribune that he had been in regular touch with voters of the Roorkee Assembly seat for the past five years and also with party office-bearers and grass-roots workers since he joined the BJP. “I am hopeful that the BJP election screening committee and the leadership will give me a chance to prove to my detractors that I win on the basis of mass development works done by me as MLA. I have good relations with local residents. I will prove Chief Minister Harish Rawat wrong that voters will teach dissidents a lesson. Instead, through my win, voters of Roorkee will clarify that people are perturbed with Rawat’s autocratic style of governance and mass corruption,” said Batra.

He said upgrade of the Roorkee Municipal Committee to Municipal Corporation, construction of a suspension bridge on the Ganga Canal at Civil Lines, energy garbage disposal project and beautification of several city intersections, parks, footpaths and re-carpeting of internal roads through his MLA LAD funds were some of his major achievements.

An equally confident Jain said he was sure of getting the party ticket as he had been a dedicated party worker for decades and had been preparing for the forthcoming Assembly elections for the past five years.

“Mass development works were done in my two tenures as MLA. Development has got stalled in the last five years. Anyone can claim the party ticket but ultimately what matters is winning ability, loyalty towards the party and proximity to party workers and voters,” said Jain.

Present Mayor Yashpal Rana is a leading contender of the Congress ticket, whom local political observers say can match both Jain and Batra in terms of political clout, following, finances and youth workers.

Rana is also banking on his three and half years’ tenure as Mayor wherein he has carried out several development projects. He has also ensured unity among Congress councillors. Rana is said to be close to the Chief Minister and hence he is likely to get the ticket from Roorkee.

Local resident Subedar Major (retd) Buddhi Singh Rana said though a large number of ex-servicemen were living in Roorkee, local public representatives had never taken their issues seriously. He added that during campaigning, every candidate assures them of resolving their problems but never show up after winning the elections.

There is no good airport or railway station in Roorkee. Also the proposed metro project covering Dehradun, Rishikesh and Haridwar should be extended to Roorkee, said Amita Ohri, headmistress of a private school.