In Mathura, tough road ahead for Hema Malini in re-election bid

Hema Malini, the BJP candidate from Mathura, has expressed confidence that she will win the electoral battle against the SP-BSP alliance.

"Development in Mathura is all due to my efforts. SP-BSP are only engaged in fighting with each other. There is a huge Modi wave here," Hema Malini said after casting her vote in the second phase of Lok Sabha elections on Thursday.

Mathura is one of the significant Lok Sabha seats out of 80 constituencies from the Hindi heartland of India. A Bharatiya Janata Party candidate won from here four times between 1991 and 1999, but the charm was broken by Congress's Manvendra Singh who swept the seat in 2004.

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In 2009, the Rashtriya Lok Dal's Jayant Chaudhary won the Lok Sabha elections from here. The party had fought the election here in an alliance with the BJP.

In 2014, the BJP fielded Hema Malini from the seat who registered a landslide win from the constituency, defeating Chaudhary by over three lakh votes. BSP's Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi trailed, finishing in the third spot.

This time around Malini, who is confident of seizing another term from the seat, is pitted against RLD's Kunwar Narendra Singh and Congress's Mahesh Pathak. And she depends on the Modi wave.

In the birthplace of Lord Krishna, one's 'karma' is what matters. And almost all voters agree that PM Modi did well to retaliate against Pulwama terror attack.

Mathura has a sizeable but influential Jat community. The farmers aren't too happy and the general impression is that Hema Malini has not done much for rural areas, where Jats (4.5 lakh) heavily outnumber others. The BJP is trying to project Hema Malini as a Jat owing to her marriage with Bollywoood icon Dharmendra, who has also campaigned for her, but locals here think all this has little meaning.

"The government increased the wheat procurement price. But the cost of fertilizer too went up. Everything else relating to farming is under the GST. Diesel cost too is raised. There are more issues, but no one is ready to hear us," says Jagpal Singh, a farmer from Phenchari village. The locals say that Hema Malini has support base only in the city, not in rural areas which she ignored in the last five years.

The Mathura Lok Sabha constituency is part of Mathura district in Uttar Pradesh and comprises five assembly segments - Chhata, Mant, Goverdhan, Mathura and Baldev. Muslims form the second most important vote bank here.

For Congress, it looks like Mathura has offered a tough field to plough. The party has not been able to win elections from here since Manvendra Singh's victory in 2004.

The RLD is fighting this year's polls in an alliance with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party and Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party. It must be noted that both BSP and SP has had a poor report card in Mathura. The only time when an RLD candidate won from the seat was when the party was in an alliance with the BJP.