Campaign culminates with demonstrations, roadshows, and visits to temples

Ghaziabad/Noida: In a frantic last-ditch effort to win over voters before the polls on April 26 close, candidates from a number of political parties traversed respective districts.

At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the brief but fierce campaign for the two NCR seats’ Lok Sabha seats came to an end.

Atul Garg of the BJP concluded his campaign in Ghaziabad with a 2-kilometer tour that went from Bajaria Gurdwara to Navyug Market in the ancient city.

Former GMC mayor Ashu Verma and party MLAs Sunil Sharma (Sahibabad) and Ajitpal Tyagi (Muradnagar) surrounded him. He had prayed in the gurdwara earlier in the day.

“I already represent this area. In the assembly elections in 2017 and 2022, they gave me two votes. The BJP will win the seat once again, and love has not been lost. Compared to the last Lok Sabha election, increasing the winning margin is our task, he told TOI. The BJP candidate won by a margin of more than 5 lakh votes in 2019.

“I have campaigned for votes in the names of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi throughout. “I am merely their emissary,” Garg said. The roadshow ended in Navyug Market after passing through Chaupla, Anaj Mandi, and Ghanta Ghar.

Also running for office in the old city regions was Congresswoman Dolly Sharma, the INDIA alliance candidate. Her cavalcade went past Malliwara Chowk, Ambedkar Road, Dasna Gate, and Ramtaram Road before coming to an end at Ghanta Ghar, where she presented a floral homage to a monument of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. She was seen waving and welcoming the throng from atop an SUV.

“In 2019, I again ran from the Ghaziabad seat, but the atmosphere is more positive and biased towards the Congress than it was in the last Lok Sabha election. I have visited every corner of the constituency, interacting with locals and hosting open forums and road shows. I had encouragement from individuals from all walks of life, no matter where I went. This time, the BJP will pay a price, she said.

Nand Kishor Pundir of the BSP stopped to meet voters who had gathered along his roadshow route as his cavalcade wound through the villages of the Dhaulana assembly segment. This constituency’s BSP support is overwhelmingly strong. Throughout the campaign, people have supported us, and my roadshow went through the Khera, Sikhera, and Bajaria villages,” Pundir said.

From the Ghaziabad constituency, fourteen candidates are running. There are fifteen candidates running in GB Nagar, where Mahesh Sharma of the BJP, Mahendra Nagar of the SP, and Rajendra Singh Solanki of the BSP are engaged in a triangular struggle.

Mahesh Sharma had a roadshow in Khurja, which is home to a sizable Jat, Gurjar, and Rajput communities, to cap off his demanding campaign.

Sharma, who is running for a third term, said, “People want to see Narendra Modi ji become the Prime Minister of the country for the third time.”

Mahendra Nagar of the SP, who organized a 60-kilometer roadshow from Badalpur in Dadri to Sikandrabad, expressed his satisfaction with the reaction he got in the few minutes he had for his campaign. I have 26 days to run for office. I gave it my all, and I received a ton of support. The people want a government that is attentive to these concerns because they see issues like corruption, inflation, and jobs as being of the biggest significance,” Nagar told TOI.

Before arriving at the SP office in Sikandrabad, Nagar welcomed fans as his roadshow passed through Dadri Nagar, Chithera, Nai Basti, Beel, Kot, Luharli, Nagla, Hridaypur, and Sanwali.

After facing criticism from other party members, Nagar was temporarily replaced by Rahul Awana as the alliance candidate. A Gurjar leader, he concentrated much of his campaign efforts on the countryside. Nidhi, Nagar’s daughter, had also urged the public to support her father earlier in the day. The main attendees of the roadshow were senior party leader Mukhiya Gurjar and Sardhana MLA Atul Pradhan. A panchayat was also convened by SP in Dadri’s Achheja.

Meanwhile, Rajendra Singh Solanki of the BSP conducted a roadshow in Greater Noida that ran from Chhajarsi Colony to Swarn Nagari.

“I have an advantage over the other contenders since I’m a local. Everywhere I went, I didn’t have to introduce myself,” he said.

In the middle of the 1980s, Solanki, a Khurja native, served as a Congress member of parliament for Bulandshahr’s Sikandrabad seat. The GB Nagar constituency consists of more than 1,400 settlements. “I am happy with the outcome, but I covered as many villages as I could in one month,” he told TOI.

In the meantime, Manish Kumar Verma, the district election officer, said that starting at 6 p.m., political parties and their candidates would not be permitted to engage in any election-related activity.