GHOSI(MAU): The poll temperature is competing with the sweltering heat in the Ghosi Lok Sabha constituency in Mau district as the BJP and Samajwadi Party (SP) are at daggers drawn to snatch the seat from the BSP, which had won the seat in 2019. However, the sitting MP remained in jail his entire five-year term due to a rape and abetment to suicide case.
In Ghosi, the political prestige of Om Prakash Rajbhar of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) is at stake. It is the only seat that Rajbhar got in the seat-sharing arrangement with the BJP, and he has fielded his son Arvind Rajbhar to take on SP’s Bhumihar candidate Rajiv Rai.
Meanwhile, the BSP, in a bid to sustain the seat, has fielded Balkrishna Chauhan, who won the 1999 Lok Sabha election on a BSP ticket after the death of Kalpnath Rai, from the same seat. As the scenario on the ground suggests, the election in Ghosi is set to be a direct contest between NDA and INDIA Alliance candidates, with the BSP striving hard to retain it.
The silence of blistering summer noon is often broken by the warp and weft of weavers, the community that dominates Ghosi’s social landscape. However, no interaction with the people of the constituency is complete without mentioning Kalpnath Rai, the Congress stalwart who took Ghosi to new heights of development.
He represented Ghosi in Lok Sabha for four consecutive terms from 1989 to 1998. Rai, who had been a member of Rajya Sabha thrice, still dominates any discourse in Mau-Ghosi even 25 years after his death. The attention Ghosi received during Rai’s tenure as its MP and the development of the constituency under him is yet to find a match, according to the people of Mau.