NOIDA: Union defence minister Rajnath Singh’s son Pankaj Singh won the Noida assembly seat for the BJP again, defeating his nearest rival Samajwadi Party’s Sunil Choudhury by a margin of over 1.81 lakh votes — the second highest victory margin in the state polls. Noida voters said they voted for women safety, law and order and better infrastructure.
Singh polled over 2.44 lakh votes, while Choudhury got 62,806 votes. Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Kripa Ram Sharma came a distant third getting 16,292 votes while Congress’s Pankhuri Pathak bagged 13,494 votes.
Noida has 7,14,072 registered voters, of which a little over 3.45 lakh people cast their ballots in this election. Singh bagged 70.16%, Choudhury 18.04%, Sharma 4.68% and Pathak 3.88% of the total votes polled. Some 2,463 voters exercised the NOTA (None of the Above) option, which is 0.71%.
Singh, in fact, had maintained a strong lead right from the beginning of vote counting for the Noida seat. “I thank the people of Noida for having faith in the BJP and voting for us,” he said, after winning the election on Thursday.
Noida is an urban constituency which has been the BJP's stronghold since its inception. The BJP has been winning the seat since 2012 when it was carved out of Dadri constituency as a separate assembly segment.
Singh said there was no specific strategy to secure the seat by such a huge margin. “We just reached out to people with the government’s schemes and benefits. We made an honest effort to deliver the promises.” The residents of Noida, particularly women and entrepreneurs, said they believed that a “double engine government” would be good for the state’s development.
Sudhir Shrivastava, vice-president of Noida Entrepreneurship Association (NEA), said, “The BJP is at the Centre and also in the state. They have launched several big-ticket projects, including Jewar airport and the defence corridor. These would lead to the development of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the region.”
“If another party came to power, these development projects could have taken a backseat. So, Noida’s business community voted for the BJP,” he added.
Chhavi Methi, a resident of Sector 50, said that women safety was also an important issue in this election.
“Earlier there was a sense of ‘gooda raj’ but now the law and order situation has changed for the better in the city,” she said.
“The government’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has also attracted me and many others. The BJP government is also carrying out several other development works through the Noida Authority,” she said.
SK Jain, Sector 18 market association president, also agreed. “Law and order is an important issue for the business community. The crime graph has come down due to the commissionerate system in Noida. There is also a change in the behaviour of government and police officials and they have become people-friendly,” he said.
SP candidate Choudhury, however, said that he was a bit disappointed with the poll result. “There are certain areas in Noida which are considered SP strongholds. We know that they voted for us but the results are different.”
In the 2017 assembly election, Singh won the Noida assembly seat for the BJP, defeating Choudhary by 1,04,016 votes.
