It is not likely to be a cakewalk for the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the eight Lok Sabha seats of western Uttar Pradesh where elections are scheduled to take place in the first phase on 11 April.

In the 2014 General Election, the BJP won all these eight seats: Meerut-Hapur, Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Saharanpur, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar and Bijnor with an overwhelming majority.

It was clearly the Modi wave which allowed them to make a clean sweep of all 14 seats of Meerut, Moradabad and Saharanpur divisions, including these eight seats in western UP in 2014 with a margin over two lakhs with the exception of Saharanpur. The BJP has fielded its sitting MPs in seven of these eight seats. The only exception is Kairana where the party had lost the byelection that took place last year after the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh.

In the prestigious Meerut- Hapur seat, the BJP`s candidate is two time MP Rajendra Agarwal who is in the fray to complete his hattrick. In 2014 Rajendra Aggarwal registered a victory of over 2 lakh votes over his BSP rival Mohammad Shahid Akhlaq. Samajwadi Party’s Shahid Manzoor finished third while Congress candidate Nagma was fourth.

The BJP is largely banking on the Modi magic again. Agarwal’s loyalists and supporters are working hard to ensure his victory for the third time in a row. But this time the contest is not that easy as the alliance of SP-BSP-RLD has changed political equations causing the BJP camp to sweat it out while campaigning for its candidate.

Agarwal is being challenged by alliance candidate Haji Yakub Qureshi and Congress candidate Harendra Aggarwal. Of the over 18.6 lakh electorate, 5 lakh are Muslims, 4 lakh SC including 3 lakh Jatavs, 3 lakh OBCs, 1 25 lakh Gujjars, 1 lakh Jats, 75,000 Brahmin – Tyagi and 80,000 Punjabis.

Meerut seat has been known as the conventional seat of the BJP for several decades. Only in 1980 ( Mohsina Kidwai) and 1999 (Avtar Singh Bhadana) it was won by Congress and in 2004 by BSP( Shahid Akhlaq). Since 1991-1999, the late Amar Pal Singh was a three time MP from BJP who, however, lost his fourth election to Congress. Post 2009 the seat has been with the BJP. Out of the five Assembly constituencies in this Lok Sabha seat four have BJP MLAs. Yet the election is appearing to be tough for the party.

The SP-BSP-RLD alliance has emerged as a major threat to BJP with a solid back-up of Muslims, Dalits, Jats and other anti-Modi voters. Interestingly there is no factionalism observed in the alliance as the candidate of BSP is getting full support of SP and RLD here. SP leader and former minister Shahid Manzoor who is vigorously campaigning for alliance candidate who was his rival in 2014 said: “An invincible BJP in 2014 election is now on the back foot because of the alliance’. Their own people are questioning Modi and his hate politics now, he said.

The challenge is not only from the alliance but also the Congress candidate Harendra Aggarwal. He is the son of former UP CM late Babu Banarsi Das and is an influential businessman. Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka and Jyotiraditya would be coming to campaign for him on 8 April to brighten his prospects in the election. Moreover, the Congress candidate is expected to sneak into the upper caste votes of the BJP, especially of Vaishya community, while the Muslim votes are expected to remain undivided, opined a political observer, adding that the election in western UP is basically on caste and religion lines but this time it is turning out to be pro and anti-Modi .

For the BJP candidate, the apathy of party supporters is also a matter of grave concern. The enthusiasm of party workers is not the same as it was in 2014, claimed a senior party leader adding that the cadre is not being given due weightage in this election as a result of which the workers are not coming out as they are expected to.

The ruling party candidate seem to be struggling for issues and is mainly contesting in the name of Modi and development. “There has been a good development in the area,” said Rajendra Aggarwal, adding that besides good connectivity with Delhi, the passport office and airport are big contributions of the BJP to Meerut besides the other successful programmes of the Modi government . But Meerut could not be included in the Smart city project for which the MP was also blamed by a section of people.

The opposition candidates are attacking the Modi government on issues of unemployment, demonetisation, GST and sugar cane dues. ” This government is nothing but a pack of lies and people have now realised it,” said Haji Yakub. The business class here also is unhappy with the BJP. “Business has been badly affected and the people in trade are unhappy and still trying to recover after GST and demonetisation,” said Sarvesh Kumar, General Secretary, Meerut bullion traders association.

In Ghaziabad, the sitting MP of BJP V K Singh is in the fray again and is being challenged by Dolly Sharma of Congress and Suresh Bansal of Samajwadi Party, an alliance candidate. The issues are the same in Ghaziabad as in Meerut with addition of outside candidate charge against BJP. Ghaziabad has a good percentage of upper caste votes, mainly Brahmins and Vaishyas. Dolly Sharma is a local candidate and so is Suresh Bansal. Sharma had also contested the mayoral election on Congress ticket and lost to BJP’s Asha Sharma. Priyanka Gandhi had campaigned for Dolly in Ghaziabad where a large number of people had turned up for her roadshow. But it has to be seen that what percentage of this turnout would convert to votes for the Congress candidate.

Similarly, in the Baghpat seat the sitting MP of BJP and former commissioner of Mumbai police Satya Pal Singh is facing allegations of being an outsider and that he was not available to people of his constituency in the past five years. But contrary to the 2014 election this time the contest is not with RLD chief Ch Ajit Singh but his young son Jayant Chaudhary who is the alliance candidate and hence has a better chance of winning as Congress too is not in the contest in this seat.

In Kairana constituency the BJP gave ticket to Pradeep Chaudhary rejecting the stake of Mriganka Singh, daughter of late MP Hukum Singh, as she failed to retain the seat for the party in the byelection. The Congress has fielded Jat leader Harendra Malik while the alliance candidate is sitting MP Tabassum Hasan. Kairana was the experimental ground of the alliance in the byelection of 2018 and Ajit Singh successfully managed to develop an affinity of jats with Muslims after the communal riots of 2013. The constituency has over 1.40 lakh Jat voters and the presence of Malik will help in restricting jat voters inclination towards BJP.

BJP is also being damaged by Mriganka Singh`s loyalist Hindu Gujjars as she was denied ticket in spite of the fact that she had worked relentlessly in the constituency and her father was a highly respected name here. The PM in his address in rally of Nanauta town of district Saharanpur on Thursday mentioned Mriganka and acknowledged the contribution of Hukum Singh to Kairana.

In Muzaffarnagar RLD chief Ajit Singh is giving a tough time to BJP’s sitting MP and former minister Sanjeev Baliyan. This is the first time that Ajit Singh is contesting in a constituency other than the party citadel Baghpat. But in view of this seat being a Jat stronghold, Singh is hopeful of winning the election this time. The contest in Muzaffarnagar is directly between the alliance and BJP as the Congress has not pitted its candidate against Singh which also brightens his chances of winning. While Singh is trying to work out Dalit-Jat-Muslim equation in his favour, the formula evolved by his late father Ch Charan Singh, the BJP candidate is banking on the votes of Baliyan khap to which he belongs. Singh is also primarily raising the issue of sugar cane farmers and their pending dues in this election.

The contest in Saharanpur is triangular between BJP sitting MP Raghav Lakhanpal, Congress candidate Imraan Masood and alliance candidate Fazlurreham of BSP. In 2014 Imraan Masood had lost to Lakhanpal by a margin of 65,000 votes and is hopeful of winning this time being a popular choice who also has the support of Bheem Army, the Dalit organisation of Chandrasekhar alias Ravan.

The contest is tough for the BJP’s sitting MP Kunwar Bhartendu in Bijnor as well. Bhartendu is facing strong opposition this time from the people of his constituency who are unhappy with him. His main contest is with Malok Nagar of BSP as alliance candidate who has put his complete strength in this election. The issue of pending sugar cane dues of farmers also dominates in the constituency as there are nine sugar mills in the district. The presence of other parties here is not noticeable.

Similar protests were faced by Union minister and sitting MP Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Budh Nagar seat. The alliance candidate here is Satbeer Nagar of BSP, who is banking on the Gujjar votes besides Dalits and Muslims. The Congress has fielded Dr Arvind Singh Chauhan.