Congress turncoats manage to hold ground in hill state

 Congress turncoats, who contested the Uttarakhand Assembly elections as BJP candidates, have continued their winning spree.

Ten out of the 12 Congressmen, who joined the BJP ahead of the Assembly polls, have emerged victorious.

BJP’s Pradeep Batra won the Roorkee seat defeating BJP rebel Suresh Chand Jain, who contested as a Congress candidate. While Batra polled 40,000 votes, Jain could manage only 27,458.

Satpal Maharaj, who was spoken about as the chief ministerial probable, won from Chaubattakhal defeating Rajpal Singh Bisht of the Congress by a margin of 6,194 votes.

Father-son duo Yashpal Arya and Sanjeev Arya won from Bajpur and Nainital Assembly seats, while Harak Singh Rawat continued his winning spree by bagging the Kotdwar seat. The Aryas had joined the BJP a few days ahead of the elections. Their candidature had caused immense heartburn among a section of the BJP, which was unhappy at rebels being rewarded by the party at the cost of loyalists.

Shailarani Rawat and Shailendra Mohan Singhal were not that fortunate. Shailarani, who was often at loggerheads with Chief Minister Harish Rawat, lost as a BJP candidate from Kedarnath. Manoj Rawat of the Congress emerged victorious from the seat, while Shailarani finished a distant fourth.

Singhal lost the Jaspur seat to Adesh Singh Chauhan of the Congress. Subodh Uniyal retained the Narendra Nagar Assembly seat by defeating BJP rebel Om Gopal Rawat, who was backed by the Congress. Saurabh Bahuguna, the son of former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, who led the rebellion in the Congress last year, won from Sitarganj, while Umesh Sharma Kau won the Raipur seat by a huge margin of 36,771 votes.

Rekha Arya, who had dramatically switched sides to the BJP on the day trust vote was sought by Harish Rawat last year, managed to win from Someshwar by a slender margin of 710 seats.