Tehri bypoll result reflects people's anger against Cong: BJP

The verdict of Tehri Lok Sabha bypoll is an expression of the people's anger against the "anti-people" policies of the Congress-led governments at the Centre and in Uttarakhand, and does not portend well for the party vis-a-vis 2014 General elections, BJP today said.

"The message of this bypoll is loud and clear. It is a mandate against the anti-people policies of the ruling coalition both at the Centre and in the state and the Congress should now be ready to lose all the five Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand in the next General elections," state BJP president Bishan Singh Chufal told reporters here.

Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah, who defeated Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna's son and Congress candidate Saket Bahuguna by over 22,000 votes, was present with Chufal.

Shah, the daughter-in-law of the erstwhile Tehri royal family thanked the people for her victory and promised to do all she could to meet their expectations.

The state BJP president said the bypoll result was also a reflection of the people's anger against the six-month-old Bahuguna government, which according to him did "nothing much" on the development front.

In the last Lok Sabha polls in 2009, all the five Parliamentary seats in the state had gone to Congress' kitty.

When asked why the BJP despite emerging triumphant from the high profile seat in Dehrdaun district, lagged behind Congress in the rural segments of the constituency especially the ones falling in Tehri and Uttarkashi districts, Chufal said though the reasons are still being looked into, one of them could be due to lack of approach roads in those areas the party could not carry its message to people.

Commenting on party turncoat Matbar Singh Kandari's claim that he will get Congress 60,000 additional votes, Chufal said the poll verdict must have left him in no doubt about the strength of his tall claim.

Switching loyalty shortly before the bypoll, former BJP heavyweight Kandari had joined the Congress.

His induction into the party had been interpreted in political circles as a shot in the arm for Congress ahead of the bypoll.