Perennially his backers, Jain targets urban voters again

With the urban electorate having backed him in the recent Vidhan Sabha elections, Joginderpal Pal Jain — the SAD candidate for the Moga bypoll — has targeted this constituency again and has been working overtime to woo the urban Moga voter. Jain has hit the campaign trail and stays till late in the night in the urban areas.

During the Assembly elections at Moga in January, last year, Jain won by a margin of 4625 votes, thanks largely to a lead of 15, 000 votes in the urban region. He had been behind by nearly 10,000 votes in the rural areas.

Moga is predominantly an urban constituency with more than half of its voters from these areas. Of the 1.74 lakh voters here, over a lakh are urban voters. The SAD candidate, however, has a peculiar problem to overcome. While the urban electorate has backed him in previous elections, they, however, have perennially forsaken the Akalis. Such has been SAD's dismal performance here that two days ago, party MLA Jathedar Tota Singh admitted in a rally that the constituency has been problematic for the ruling party.

Jain, however, is confident of victory and hopes to profit from his switching over. He is counting on urban voters supporting him and the fact that rural electorate have traditionally backed SAD for an improved victory margin. " The masses will vote for me. I have taken a risk for them because I wanted to serve them. So I am sure that I will get my urban share and even the rural performance will improve. The winning margin will be much more this time," Jain said.

On the other hand, Congress candidate Vijay Sathi is also banking on the urban areas due to the Congress' past record. After holding rallies at villages in the morning, Sathi then begins door-to-door campaigning at mohallas in the city areas in the evening. The third prominent candidate in the fray, the Sanjha Morcha's Ravinder Singh Dhaliwal has also begun campaigning in full earnest.

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