Chunav Flashback: In 1985, the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh witnessed an attention-grabbing bypoll contest between Congress’ Meira Kumar, Janata Dal’s Ram Vilas Paswan and Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Mayawati. It was for the very first time when Congress chief Meira Kumar entered into the electoral politics and faced two massive dalit leaders, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mayawati.
Hailing from a dalit household too, Meira Kumar took on the problem and proved her candidature in opposition to her Scheduled Caste (SC) opponents.
Meira Kumar obtained Congress’ nomination for the Lok Sabha from the Bijnor constituency bypoll in Uttar Pradesh in 1985.
As a newcomer in the electoral politics, she defeated two veteran dalit leaders together with Ram Vilas Paswan and Mayawati.
Meira Kumar obtained a complete of 1,28,086 votes, Ram Vilas Paswan secured 1,22,747 whereas Mayawati was a distant third with 61,504 votes.
The Congress dalit chief defeated Ram Vilas Paswan by a margin of 5,339 votes.
Following her election to the Lok Sabha, Kumar was appointed as member of the Ministry of External Affairs’ Consultative Committee in 1986.
In 1984, the Congress recorded a historic victory in Uttar Pradesh — which had 85 parliamentary seats at the moment — after it secured 83 seats whereas two had been gained by Lok Dal.
Meira Kumar is the daughter of former deputy Prime Minister and outstanding Schedule Caste chief Jagjivan Ram.
In 2024, the important thing contest in Bijnor is between Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Deepak Saini, Rashtriya Lok Dal’s (RLD) Chandan Chauhan and BSP’s Chaudhary Vijendra Singh. Polling in Bijnor has already concluded in the primary part on April 19.
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