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Circa 2017: BJP's Ram temple card may have lost its magic

Among the seven phases of Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the Phase V, scheduled on February 27 is going to be crucial for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the party needs to have strong foothold in Ayodhya, Lord Ram's birth place, to qualify in both the UP elections and the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, poll pundits feel.

The exit poll agencies presume a lot of equations, but the ground reality tells a different story. A section of local youth, who were not even born in 1992 during the 'Ram Temple movement' feel that Ram Mandir is no longer an issue for them in Ayodhya. Rather, they want employment and better job prospects.

In a last-ditch effort, the BJP promised the 'Ram Temple' in its election manifesto, but the question remains that whether the people of Ayodhya would like to be a part of the religious brigade or not?

Ayodhya, which had been the saffron party's bastion for 25 years, was snatched by incumbent Samajwadi Party (SP) in the last 2012 Assembly elections. Construction of Ram Temple is no longer an emotive issue in Ayodhya. As the voter is silent, the BJP is facing a tough fight with its main rivals SP and BSP, this time also.

Irrespective of caste and creed, the locals also feel that the sitting SP MLA Tej Narayan Pandey aka Pawan Panday has also done enough work in the area.

But at the same time, local traders feel that more could be done in the temple-city and Pandey who is also a minister in Akhilesh Yadav's cabinet never tried to improve the city's economic structure. On the contrary, around 55,000- 60,000 Muslims, who live peacefully in the temple city, are also confused whether to go with BJP's 'Parivartan' mantra to develop its economic-demographic structure or to cast votes for SP and BSP.
So, to combat the battle, the saffron party has fielded Ved Prakash Gupta, a veteran of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, and BSP has given the ticket to Bazmi Siddiqui, who is Ayodhya's first Muslim candidate for mainstream political party in decades.

However, on the last day of campaigning for phase V of UP polls, the city seemed to be flooded by saffron colour on Saturday and the party's top brass came out in the street to win the heart of the Ram Jnmabhoomi once again.
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