Not just Cong, BSP & AAP may also make it a tough contest for Dhami in Khatima

Dehradun/Rudrapur: Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami is caught in a tight contest against his Congress rival, Bhuvan Kapri, in Udham Singh Nagar’s Khatima constituency, as per poll analysts.

The 46-year-old two-time legislator has won two consecutive elections from Khatima -- considered as a small constituency in terms of voters -- first in 2012 and then in 2017.

However, in the 2017 assembly polls, despite Modi wave, Dhami had won the seat with a wafer-thin margin of 2,709 votes against debutant Bhuvan Kapri.

This time, BSP and AAP have also fought an intense campaign, making the contest tougher for the CM. BSP fielded Ramesh Singh Rana while AAP's candidate is the party's former state president SS Kaler.

The Khatima seat has roughly 120,145 electorates - with 40,000 hill community voters, nearly 30,000 ST voters, 14,000 voters from the Purvanchal community, around 10,000 Sikhs and around 10,000 Muslims. The Bengali community is also present in significant numbers.

Poll analysts say that the road to victory is not going to be easy this time for Dhami. As per analysts, votes of the Tharu community have played a decisive role in the past elections and it will be a determining factor this time too.

Krishna Lal Fulera, a poll analyst, said, "Tharu community voters have played a decisive role in the Khatima seat and their silence this time has confused everyone. They are the second largest vote bank, and in the last elections the BSP candidate Ramesh Rana got over 17,000 votes, mostly from the Tharu community to which he belongs. That was the main reason behind the defeat of Bhuvan Kapdi and the win of Puskhar Singh Dhami."

"The major difference this time is that Dhami fought this election as a sitting CM. The Pahadi community seemed to be rooting behind him. However, there is confusion over which way the Tharu community votes swung. Also, with the significant number of Muslim voters in the segment and Sikh voters, the fight will not be so easy for Dhami," Fulera added.

AAP candidate SS Kaler, being a Sikh himself, is believed to have picked up some of the 10,000-strong Sikh votes that could make things difficult for both the national parties.


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