Congress' Nirmal Khatri, facing sitting MP Lallu Singh and Anand Sen of SP, claims that the Ayodhya dispute was no longer an election plank in the Lok Sabha election in Faizabad.
Faizabad, one of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, will go to polls in the fifth phase of general elections on May 6. The sitting MP of Faizabad is Lallu Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who won from here in 2014 elections by defeating Samajwadi Party's Mitrasen Yadav with a margin of 2.82 lakh votes.
Congress' Nirmal Khatri, the sitting MP, was pushed back to the fourth position in 2014 behind Lallu Singh, Mitrasen Yadav and BSP's Jitendra Kumar Singh.
Khatri had won the seat in 2009 elections, the first victory for the Congress since 1984 in the seat which has been at the centre of a national controversy over Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. Incidentally, the 1984 win was also scored by Khatri who was then only 33 years old.
In 2009, Khatri had defeated Mitrasen Yadav of the SP. Yadav first won from Faizabad in 1989 on a Communist Party of India (CPI) ticket. In 1991, he lost to Bajrang Dal founder and Hindutva activist Vinay Katiyar. Yadav joined the joined Samajwadi Party (SP) in 1995 and contested the 1996 election on its ticket but again lost to Katiyar. In 1998, he was able to defeat Katiyar to again enter the Lok Sabha. After switching between SP and BSP twice, he contested 2004 election on a BSP ticket and was able to score a win.
He again joined the SP in 2009 but again lost, this time to Congress' Nirmal Khatri. Yadav and Khatri were defeated by four-time UP MLA Lallu Singh in 2014.
This time, Khatri is contesting against sitting MP Lallu Singh and Anand Sen of the Samajwadi Party, which is in an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Khatri claims that the Ayodhya dispute was no longer an election plank in the Lok Sabha election and said the BJP was distancing itself from the issue. The former state Congress chief also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his first Ayodhya visit in five years.
"The issue of construction of a temple of Lord Ram seems to have vanished from the electoral landscape. The issue of Ram temple for the past few elections had no longer been an issue for the voters of Faizabad," Khatri told PTI in an interview.
The 68-year-old underscored that had the Ayodhya issue been relevant, then he would not have won in 2009 from Faizabad, where the temple town is located.
Khatri said the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue only existed in the national media and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2014 election not due to it.
"People of Faizabad understand that politics is being done in the garb of this issue and the intention of the BJP is not right. Hence, this issue is no longer an issue," Khatri said.
"When those (BJP) who had nurtured this issue as an issue have distanced themselves from this issue, then a message has automatically gone." The former Faizabad MP alleged that Modi did not get time to come to Ayodhya in five years.
"Now, why is he raising that slogan (Jai Shri Ram)? Do you think that the public is fool?" he asked.
Modi had addressed a rally in Gosaiganj, about 25 km from Ayodhya, on Wednesday, where he reportedly raised the slogan of "Jai Shri Ram".
The holy town has been central to the BJP and the Hindutva affiliates' agitation for a Ram temple at what the faithfuls believe to be the birth place of Lord Ram. The Supreme Court had recently appointed mediators to find an amicable solution to the dispute over the 2.77 acre plot, on which the Babri Masjid stood before it was demolished by the 'karsevaks' on December 6, 1992.
The Congress leader said the major issue in the election are jobs and pointed out that there were problems of sewage in the constituency. "This city (Faizabad) lies in the middle of three prominent UP cities -- Lucknow, Allahabad and Varanasi -- and, hence, it has not been able to grow from the business point of view," he observed.
"Work on a medical college started during my tenure as MP, but it is progressing at very slow pace. People rush to Lucknow in case of any accident. The trauma centre here is facing shortage of doctors," Khatri said.
He alleged that the ruling BJP government, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, had only made announcements worth crores for the development of Ayodhya, saying the projects were yet to be implemented.
"Only foundation stones have been laid, but there has been no progress," he added.
Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency comprises four assembly segments of Faizabad district and one Vidhan Sabha constituency of Barabanki district: Dariyabad (Barabanki), Rudauli, Milkipur, Bikapur and Ayodhya (Faizabad).
UP is facing a three-pronged battle between the BJP, the Congress and BSP-SP-RLD alliance. Under the alliance's seat-sharing formula, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is contesting on 38 Lok Sabha seats of the total 80 seats, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party on 37 seats and the Chaudhary Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on three seats. The alliance has left two for Congress' Sonia Gandhi (Raebareli) and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi).
Fifth phase polls in UP
The polling for 14 Lok Sabha seats in UP will be held in the fifth phase on May. The parliamentary constituencies going to polls in fifth phase are Dhaurahra, Sitapur, Mohanlalganj (SC), Lucknow, Raebareli, Amethi, Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambi, Barabanki (SC), Ayodhya (earlier known as Faizabad), Bahraich (SC), Kaisarganj and Gonda.
In 2014, the BJP won 12 of these 14 seats in the state. Only Amethi and Raebareli, traditional bastions of the Congress, were won by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi respectively.
There are 2.47 crore voters in the 14 parliamentary constituencies. This includes 1.32 crore male voters and 1.14 crore female voters. The count of voters in the age bracket of 18-19 years is 3.39 lakh, while the number of voters aged 80 years is 4.84 lakh.
The number of voting centres is 16,126; while there are as many as 28,702 polling booths.
The counting of votes of the Lok Sabha election 2019 will be conducted on May 23.
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