The five Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand are in for straight contests between arch rivals BJP and Congress, poll watchers feel, with the SP out of the electoral fray, the BSP drawing blanks in past general elections and other smaller parties having no "substantial base" in the state.
Polls for the state's five parliamentary seats will be held on April 11.
Since the creation of Uttarakhand in 2000, the BJP and the Congress have always emerged as the dominant parties in the state, except in 2004 when the Samajwadi Party (SP) won the Haridwar parliamentary seat, they said.
SP's Rajendra Singh 'Baudy' had won Haridwar by defeating Bahujan Samaj Party's Bhagwandass in 2004.
In 2009, the Congress won all the seats while the BJP wrested them from the grand old party in 2014.
"Barring the Congress and the BJP, none of the political parties in Uttarakhand have a substantial support base.
"So, the two national parties are almost invariably locked in straight contests in the state," noted poll watcher Avdhash Kaushal said.
The SP moving out of the poll scene even after entering into an alliance with the BSP in the state, has made it almost certain that the contest on all seats will be between the two national parties, the poll watchers said.
Explaining why most general elections in Uttarakhand are BJP versus Congress, an expert on the state's politics, Jaisingh Rawat, said, "Being a border state with a large number of its residents in the armed forces, nationalist feelings have always been dominant here. They have not allowed the growth of regional parties or a sectarian mindset."
Rawat, a veteran journalist, said, "Sporadic efforts to evolve a third front consisting of regional parties in the past have failed with all of them finally merging with either the BJP or the Congress reducing electoral fights to straight contests between the two national parties."
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