Seers push parties for ticket from Haridwar, Rishikesh

Sandeep Rawat

Tribune News Service

Haridwar, October 25

Electoral fever seems to be gripping the saint community in twin pilgrim cities of Haridwar and Rishikesh. A section of saints wants political parties to field their candidates from these seats in the Assembly elections scheduled next year.

As a sizeable number of saints live in Haridwar, they have a direct bearing on the poll results in the Assembly city segment. They are pressuring both Congress and BJP to field their candidates from Haridwar and Rishikesh.

The Bharatiya Sanatan Sant Samaj Samiti at a meeting held here today made an open demand to the state BJP leadership to field saints from the Haridwar and Rishikesh Assembly seats.

National president of the Bharatiya Sanatan Sant Samaj Samiti Mahant Vinod Giri Maharaj said as a good number of saints reside in Haridwar and Rishikesh, the BJP that enjoys their supports should filed their candidates from the two seats.

“Saints are not getting due recognition and reward that they should get for catapulting the BJP from a two-seat party in 1980 to becoming the largest party in Parliament at present. BJP leaders should understand that if saints alienate themselves from the party, it will not only affect the election results in these two religious cities but also in various other segments of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh,” said Swami Vinod Maharaj, general secretary of the samiti.

Ram Swarup Brahmachari said barring some renowned saints, the local legislators and the Mayor didn’t give due consideration to their issues. BJP district president Suresh Rathore, who is also a spiritual preacher, said saints work for the welfare of society and humanity and the party would ensure that they get due respect at party forums and by public representatives.

However, Rathore refused to say anything on the BJP fielding candidates of saints from Haridwar in the forthcoming elections.

Political parties have never ignored the concerns of saints in any election. This is the reason that in the last Assembly election, the Congress had fielded Satpal Brahmachari against the then two-time legislator of the BJP Madan Kaushik. The BJP gave the ticket to Swami Yatishwaranand from the Haridwar rural seat. While Brahmachari came second with 8,000 votes, Swami Yatishwaranand won comprehensively to become a legislator.

In the 2009 parliamentary elections, the BJP had fielded Swami Yatindranand Giri Maharaj against Congress candidate Harish Rawat, who won the election. Swami Yatindranand came second with about 2.48 lakh votes and he even secured more votes than heavyweight BSP candidate Mohammed Shahzad, who got about 1.81 lakh votes.

The dominance of saints is also witnessed in the local civic body elections. Saint Satpal of the Radha Krishan Ashram become the municipal chairperson in 2008. In the 2013 Municipal Corporation elections, the Congress had fielded Swami Rishishwaranand Maharaj of the Chetan Jyoti ashram who lost to BJP candidate Manoj Garg by 17,147 votes.