Rampur Lok Sabha Election Results

Rampur is one of the Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. The seat is currently held by Naipal Singh Ritaiyard who is from the Bhartiya Janata Party. He won the Mainpuri Lok Sabha bypoll by a margin of more than 3.21 lakh votes. In 2014 polls, with a modest vote share of 37 percent, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate had won Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur Lok Sabha seat. The constituency, with an estimated 50 percent being Muslim voters, has a long tradition of electing a Muslim member of Parliament. However, of the 12 candidates in the fray then, seven were Muslims. All major parties, except the BJP, had nominated Muslim candidates, leading to a fragmentation of the votes of the minority community. However, his win was not predicted by political pundits because Rampur is a Muslim-dominated seat. Born in Chandaula in Aligarh, Naipal has completed M.Sc. in Chemistry and Ph.D. at Agra University. Let us now recall, during 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Bharatiya Janata Party made almost a clean sweep, bagging 71 seats, while its ally Apna Dal got two seats. The SP had got five and the Congress could retain just Amethi and Raebareli seats. The Bahujan Samaj Party could not open its account. Uttar Pradesh plays a crucial role in the formation of a government at the centre as it has 80 Lok Sabha seats out of the total 543 in the Lower House of Parliament. The Rampur Parliamentary constituency (constituency number 7) has a total of 1,616,984 electorates out of which 872,084 are males and 744,900 are females according to Election Commission of India 2014 reports. Can the BJP repeat its performance in Muslim-dominated Rampur during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls? Let us wait and watch.