BJP bags 53% vote share, grabs all five seats in Ghaziabad

GHAZIABD: The BJP candidates in the district registered impressive wins in all the five assembly constituencies of the district by trouncing their nearest rivals by a huge margin of votes.
The party garnered 53.7% of total votes polled across all five assembly constituencies of Ghaziabad as compared to its state-wide average vote share of 39.7%.
In all but one constituency of the district, that is, Loni, BJP’s winning candidates have secured more than 50% of the votes polled.In Loni, Nand Kishor Gujjar of the BJP could secure only 41.2% of the total votes polled.
The biggest victory margin was recorded by BJP candidate Sunil Sharma in the Sahibabad assembly seat, which is primarily urban and includes the trans-Hindon areas of Indirapuram, Vasundhara, Vaishali and Kaushambi.
Sunil Sharma defeated his nearest rival, Amarpal Sharma of Congress, by a huge margin of over 1.50 lakh votes.
On the other hand, BSP, which had won four out of the five assembly seats in Ghaziabad in the 2012 polls, has been completely wiped out. The BSP candidates just managed to secure second position in the assembly seats of Loni, Modinagar, Ghaziabad and Muradnagar. However, its vote share in the district dwindled to a mere 18.3%.
The SP-Congress alliance, which went to the polls with two seats for the former and three for the latter, also drew a blank. The alliance has garnered a mere 19.81% of the total votes polled in the district. The ruling Samajwadi Party had fielded candidates in Loni and Modinagar who have garnered 74,754 votes in all, which is a mere 5.36% of the total votes polled.
SP has attributed its loss to caste-based politics and a division in the Muslim vote bank. “The BSP fielded Muslim candidates in Loni and Modinagar against the candidates of SP. This led to an erosion in the captive Muslim vote bank of the SP. Muslim votes got divided between the SP and the BSP which worked to the benefit of the BJP. Primarily, it seems, BJP has been voted by all other castes except Yadavs and Dalits,” Samajwadi Party district president Sajid Hussain said.
BJP has, however, attributed its landslide victory to the party’s strong organisational network. “Modiji’s leadership skills and the strong organisational network of the party in the region has led to the clean sweep in the district. It’s the mandate of the people for the politics of development,” BJP district president Basant Tyagi said.
“It is the mandate of the people and we respect it. Polarisation tactics were used by BJP to woo voters resulted in the mandate going in their favour,” Ghaziabad district Congress president Harendra Kasana told TOI.
The lowest margin of victory for BJP has been recorded in Loni assembly seat which has a primarily rural voter base. Nand Kishor Gujjar of the BJP has won the Loni seat by defeating his closes rival Zakir Ali of the BSP by nearly 43,000 votes.