BJP's defeat in Kairana shows people rejecting communal politics, says Sitaram Yechury

BJP's defeat at its "laboratory of communal and hate politics", Kairana, clearly shows that people did not accept the ruling party's governance and its destruction of the unity and integrity of India, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said on Wednesday.

The CPI(M) general secretary feared that the loss in the bypolls would push the RSS-BJP to spread communal tension and create a divide between religious communities to consolidate the "Hindutva votebank" ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"Well, communal division is the only weapon left in their arsenal. Surely, they would try to spread communal tension now. But I think people would not now fall prey to this," he said.

"Kairana was their laboratory of communal and hate politics. For BJP to lose with such a massive margin is a signal that people of our country are not accepting RSS-BJP's governance and the way they are destroying the unity and integrity of our country. For them to be defeated there, is very significant," Yechury told PTI.

In a major shock to the ruling BJP, the RLD won the Kairana Lok Sabha seat, defeating the rival BJP by a landslide.

Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok DaL beat BJP's Mriganka Singh by 44,618 votes, election office in Lucknow said. In the process, Hasan (48) has become the first Muslim face from Uttar Pradesh in the 16th Lok Sabha.

Hasan was backed by the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party as their joint opposition candidate.

Yechury said though the BJP is trying to project the united opposition as the biggest reason for its loss, the main reason behind it is that the ruling party is losing its social base. If you look at the vote share there is a substantiate drop in the voting percentage of the BJP, he said.

Happy about the "unprecedented" increase in the vote-share in Kerala bypoll where the LDF has won with a record margin, he said the people of the state have endorsed the understanding of the CPI(M) and the state government.

The CPI too termed the victory of the united opposition in bypolls as the victory of secular democratic forces which are coming together to defeat BJP's communal politics.

"The bypoll results show the continuation of the decline of BJP. From Gujarat, Karnataka the decline had started and it would definitely reflect in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Secular democratic forces have now realised that they should come together. People are also leaving BJP as they have realised the communal agenda of BJP," CPI leader D Raja said.

On West Bengal, where the Left had slide to the third position in the bypoll with the TMC winning the poll and BJP being the second, the Left parties have said that the TMC and the BJP have an understanding and it is the BJP which has been given the space to consolidate the Hindutva votebank by the TMC.