Novice Reena shocks Cong veteran Musafir in Pachhad

Ambika Sharma

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Tribune News Service

Solan, October 24

The BJP’s Reena Kashyap (34) emerged the first woman to win the Pachhad reserved seat by defeating Congress’ Gangu Ram Musafir by a narrow margin of 2,742 votes today.

Reena secured 22,048 votes while Musafir, who suffered his third consecutive loss in the Assembly poll, secured 19,306 votes. The trans-Giri area supported the BJP while the non-Trans-Giri area stood by the Congress as well as BJP rebel Dayal Pyari.

Dayal Pyari finished third by getting 11,651 votes while two other independents, Pawan Kumar and Surender Pal, secured 427 and 291 votes. As many as 318 pressed NOTA button.

Reena maintained her lead in all nine rounds. The lead narrowed down to 1,690 votes after the seventh round. She consolidated her lead from 1,543 in the first round to 2,593 in the second and 2,734 and 3,063 in the third and fourth rounds. It was, however, reduced to 2,547 in the fifth round when Dayal Pyari increased her margin to 5,668.

The BJP’s lead further dropped to 2,195 in the sixth round while Dayal Pyari gained further and secured 8,093 by the end of this round. In the seventh round, the BJP came closest to the Congress with the lead narrowing down to 1,690 while Dayal Pyari consolidated her position at 9,494 votes.

Though Musafir gained more votes than the BJP in the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds, he could not recover the loss suffered in other rounds. Dayal Pyari secured the second highest votes in the sixth, eighth and ninth rounds but fell to the third position in all other rounds.

Reena consolidated her vote share in the eighth round after lagging behind in fifth, sixth and seventh round and enhanced its lead by 2,678 votes. The final round saw the BJP further increase its lead slightly by 2,742 votes with the Congress finishing at the second position.

Dayal Pyari’s presence led to an undercutting of the party votes and the BJP won by a slender margin of 2,742 as against 6,427 votes in 2017.

Voters have stuck to their reputation of aligning with the ruling party though the BJP’s marathon campaign management has helped it retain the seat for the third time in succession.

First representative from trans-Giri 

• Pachhad in Sirmaur district, a male bastion, got a woman MLA for the first time 
• Reena  is the first representative of the trans-Giri area
• Kashyap (34) has earlier contested the zila parishad election from the Shillangi ward in 2010 where she did not have her own vote
• She has been a BJP activist since she was 21
• Hailing from Chaya village, she is from a non-political background
• With a postgraduate degree in public administration, Kashyap was the front-runner for the party ticket

Dhumal congratulates leaders

Hamirpur: PK Dhumal, former CM, said the victory on both seats was due to hard work of BJP leaders and workers. Congratulating Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur and BJP president Satpal Satti, he said the voters had reposed faith in policies and programmes of the BJP and now it would be the responsibility of the government to come up to their expectations.— OC