All WPI candidates combined could not get 2000 votes
By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Jaipur: Welfare Party of India (WPI) made their state election debut in North India by contesting Rajasthan elections, the state where party gave utmost focus since its formation in 2011. After an election debacle in Karnataka, WPI hoped to make a mark but again it has failed miserably.
In the beginning WPI planned fielding at least six candidates from all across Rajasthan but then settled for four. Even among those four seats at the height of election fervor they withdraw their candidate Fasahat Ali from Sawai Madhopur, who also happened to be former Jamat-e-Islami Rajasthan Ameer’s son.
Rajasthan state President of WPI Engineer Rashid Hussain.
Jamat-e-Islami has considerable presence in Sawai Madhopur villages and WPI candidate contesting doomed loss of crucial chunk of Muslim vote for the Congress.
Sources in WPI top leadership in Rajasthan confirmed to TCN, that Congress candidate Danish Abrar had back channel communications and quite a bit of cajoling to urge WPI candidate to withdraw in his favor. In fact, WPI organized a public meeting in Sawai Madhopur and made Danish sign an open declaration of demands in return of support, that includes among many things raising Muslim issues in the Assembly and justice for murdered SHO Phool Mohammed.
But later in an interview with TCN Danish Abrar refused to get into ‘community dispute’ of Phool Mohammed murder and said doing that will lead to communal politics. In Sawai Madhopur Danish Abrar got badly defeated by scion of royal family of Jaipur Diya Kumari. Thus WPI attempt to look as savior for Muslim candidate got in vain and there chance of scoring good chunk of votes in their traditional bastion.
Advocate Paker Farooque, WPI candidate from Hawa Mahal (Jaipur).
In Hawamahal Advocate Paker Farooq was the candidate who WPI was having big hopes to penetrate into 30% Muslim vote bank of the constituency. He got 8th position with just 730 votes. In fact Haji Aftab of NCP and Mohd Saleem of BSP gave better performance than him and got 6th and 5th spot respectively. Even Independents Muslim candidates over took him; in fact independent Papu Qureshi got 4,442 votes and got the third spot. Surendra Parek of BJP won the seat with 69954 votes, defeating sitting Congress 4 time MLA Kishore Sharma who got 57209 votes.
In Kota South another constituency where party was accepting some face saver turns out to be disappointment. Saifullah Khan got just 636 votes and got 5th spot, even behind his BSP rival Mohd Kadir who was ahead of him with 100 votes. BJP’s Om Birla swept the whole constituency getting 1,03,369 while congress Pankaj Mehat got 53930 votes.
Where as in the neighboring constituency of Kota North their ideological sister political party SDPI got 13,545 votes and a respectable third position.
Engineer Hussain in a meeting at Party State Headquarter.
Retired Additional Commissioner Mushtaq Ali from Jhunjhunu was the most under performer candidate of WPI with just 245 votes. JDU’s Anwar Ali Khan and an Independent Mohd. Irfan were easily ahead of him. This seat is gone to Brijender Singh of Congress with 60,929 votes.
In an earlier interview with TCN Rajasthan WPI President Rashid Hussain promised surprising results in at least two constituencies. His hope was weighted by the assurance from JIH that it will support WPI candidates which was not the same case for the party in last Karnataka elections. But now in Rajasthan elections it is clear that even JIH’s support didn’t made any difference for WPI.
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