Ammar Rizvi locked in a keen contest

mehmoodabad: senior congress leader ammar rizvi, who got the party ticket at the last moment only after resigning deputy speakership which he allegedly got with the tacit support of bjp much to the chagrin of congress, is locked here in a keen contest with old rival narendra kumar verma of bjp. rizvi had defeated verma in the last hustings when congress and bsp had poll tie-up by a handsome margin of 29,000 votes after being defeated by verma in 1991 and 1993 by 1,600 and 3,900 votes respectively.this time, the congress is fighting on its own and the bsp has fielded mohan prasad, a councillor and close confidante of narendra verma till a few months back. since the bsp has good following among 10,000 purbi (belonging to eastern region) workers and dalits, prasad is expected to make a dent in the vote bank of both congress and bjp and the winning margin, in either case, would be low. while the cong has lost the support base of bsp, the problems of bjp are multiple, the foremost being sharp division in its vote bank. besides cong, narendra has to face the onslaught of om prakash yadav of kalyan singh’s rashtriya kranti party. he is bound to snatch nearly 5,000 mullah votes, concentrated primarily in rampur mathura block, from bjp. kalyan and munni devi, younger sister of slain sp mp phoolan devi, are set to visit this erstwhile princely state on wednesday. ram adhar patel of apna dal is another potential threat to verma. the recent visit of apna dal chief sone lal patel has wooed lot of kurmi votes in patel’s favour which would make a sizable dent in kurmi base of narendra kumar verma. the vaish community is not happy with verma who allegedly masterminded defeat of a bjp candidate, a bania, in the nagar palika elections. unhone jaan boojh kar hamare ummidwar ko harwaya, ab hum unko harwainge, said ram adhar, a grocery shop-owner. the only complaint against ammar is that he is hardly available for people of mehmoodabad. woh to yahan rahte hi nahin hain, complained yasin mohammad, an old party worker. alarmed, ammar has now decided to depute his son meesam to look into peoples’ grievances. the good news for ammar is that his bete noire amir ahmad khan, the raja of mehmoodabad, has agreed to campaign for him. the raja had upstaged ammar in 1985 and won on the congress ticket. however, he lost in the next elections and congress could wrest this seat from bjp only in 1996 when ammar won by a handsome margin. “congress has won this seat only because of ammar who has given to mehmoodabad a polytechnic, stadium, a girls’ college and electrification of 34 villages,� claimed rais ahmad, sitapur city congress committee president. the party has now promised to upgrade mehmoodabad into a full-fledged district, he added. besides the pasi samaj which has promised full support to the congress, ammar also got boost from the withdrawal of rjd candidate zafar naim in his favour. this would prevent division of nearly 60,000 muslim votes. the segment has about 47,000 kurmi votes and about 15,000 upper caste votes.