Margin matters: Small means big task in UP

Jan 31, 2012 - Amita Verma |

Age Correspondent

Lucknow

As the mercury jumps up and down in Uttar Pradesh causing turmoil of sorts in the weather conditions, their morale follows a similar course and clouds of uncertainty shadow their future.
They are the ones who won their seats by a very small margin in 2007 and now have the big task of improving their margins to retain their seats.
There are about a dozen legislators who won their seat by a margin of very few votes. For instance, former BSP minister Daddan Misra won his Bhinga seat in Shravasti by a margin of 91 votes. After being denied a ticket by the BSP, Mr Misra promptly jumped on to the BJP bandwagon and is now working doubly hard to retain his seat.
Interestingly, UP chief minister and BSP president Mayawati, being the shrewd politician that she is, has denied tickets to all those MLAs who won their seats with a slender margin.
The names of Dharamraj Nishad (Katehri) who won the 2007 elections with a margin of 240 votes and Rakesh Dhar Tripathi who won the Handia seat with a margin of 1,342 votes have been struck off the BSP list.
Shahzil Islam, who won from Bareilly with 1,130 votes and Sadal Prasad who won from Gorakhpur with a margin of 2,284 votes have also been left out in the BSP list.
Mafia don-turned-politician D.P. Yadav shares a similar fate. He won his Sahaswan seat with a margin of 109 votes and after being denied a ticket by the BSP and SP, he is now contesting on the banner of his own Rashtriya Parivartan Dal. For Mr Yadav, it will be an onerous task to retain his place in the next Vidhan Sabha.
Mr Kunwar Singh of BJP had won the Jalesar seat in 2007 with 72 votes and became the member to have won with the slimmest margin in the Assembly. Known for his comic interludes in the Assembly, Mr Singh is finding it difficult to increase his margin and retain the seat.
Vishambhar Nishad of SP had won the Baberu seat with merely 174 votes and has been campaigning since the past one year to cover lost ground and make his victory more respectable this time.

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