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The sacked BJP leader Uma Bharti suffered a jolt as all 44 candidates of her newly-launched Bharatiya Janshakti Party, who contested the Vidhan Sabha elections in Uttarakhand, have forfeited their deposits. Uma Bharti had fielded candidates in 44 of the 70 assembly constituencies of Uttarakhand

People of the hill state outright rejected hardcore Hindutava of Uma Bharti and conveyed through ballot that they did not approve of her acrid remarks against senior BJP leaders LK Advani, Arun Jaitly and others.

The Bhartiya Janshakti Party candidates who lost their deposits, included Usha Negi who contested Tehri Lok Sabha by-election held with the assembly polls in Uttarakhand. Jagdish Pokharial, former district president of Samajwadi Party in Gangotri, who had deserted the Mulayam camp to join Uma Bharti, contested on the Bhartiya Janshakti Party ticket from Gangotri and lost his deposit. Similarly, former Congress leader of Nainital, Deepak Shah also forfeited his deposit from Nainital. 

Some other prominent persons of Uttarakhand, who faced humiliating defeat in the battle of ballot on Bhartiya Janshakti Party ticket, included Surendra Bhatia (Haridwar), Bhupendra Singh (Nagar Koti), Resham Singh (Mussori), Vikas Pant (Badrinath), Dinesh Pagwari (Kedarnath), Dhuni Lal (Pindar), Virendra Bisht (RudraPrayag), Mahavir Negi (Pauri), Surendra Chauhan (Jaspur), Surendra Bhatia (Haridwar) and Rishipal Sharma (Dehradun). 

Jai Shankar Acharya, Uttarakhand chief of Hindu Jagran Manch, a frontal organisation of the RSS, who joined the Bhartiya Janshakti Party after being disappointed with the BJP’s half-hearted Hinduism, told Hindustan Times that all Bhartiya Janshakti Party nominees lost their deposit but not because people rejected Uma Bharti and her party.

The main cause of the rout, he said, was that the contestants were novice in politics and could not match the electoral strategies of shrewd rivals.   He was confident of a better show by the Bhartiya Janshakti Party in the next Lok Sabha elections.

Acharya claimed that the four prominent BJP candidates---Ajai Bhatt (Ranikhet), Krishna Kumar (Almora), Tirath Singh Rawat (Pauri) and Lakhi Ram Joshi (Narendra Nagar)---were defeated because the Bhartiya Janshakti made a dent in the BJP’s votes.

“The party is only nine-month old and had no financial or other resources in comparison to other parties and going by that, results are not completely disappointing”, he added. 

Leader of the opposition in the Vidhan Sabha and senior BJP leader Lalji Tandon, while commenting on the rout of Uma Bharti’s party in Uttarakhand, said that that so far nobody who deserted the BJP had risen in his or her political career mainly because no individual was bigger or important than the organisation and Uma Bharti was bound to meet the same fate.

He said people were not ready to hear anything against much respected BJP leaders like Lal Krishna Advani or Atal Bihari Vajpayee and it was evident by the humiliating defeat of the Bhartiya Janshakti Party nominees. 

Email Vijay Sharma: vijaysharma@hindustantimes.com