Western UP: Jat Anger to wipe out BJP in 50 of the 77 seats going to poll on Saturday
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Western Uttar
Pradesh, which votes on Saturday, may well prove to be the BJP's Achilles Heel
in the crucial battle to capture the Hindi heartland state. In the 2014 Lok
Sabha polls, it had swept this region, riding a communal wave unleashed by
Jat-Muslim riots in Muzaffarnagar the previous year which left 80 dead, scores
injured and thousands displaced. Three years later, mounting rural distress,
compounded by demonetization woes, has dampened saffron efforts to rekindle
communal embers in a desperate bid for a repeat performance in the assembly
election.
The slow ebb of the
BJP in an area it believed was impregnable is evident even in a whistle-stop
trip through the constituencies of the four leading figures of the
post-Muzaffarnagar politics of polarization: MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana,
and MPs Sanjeev Balyan and Hukum Singh. All four are facing an unforeseen
backlash from unhappy voters with a litany of complaints.
While the anger cuts
across caste groups, what should worry the BJP most is the ire of the Jats who
scripted the saffron sweep in Western UP by voting lock, stock and barrel for
Narendra Modi. Jats are an estimated 17 percent of the population in the region
and can swing results in around 50 of the 77 assembly seats where polls will be
held on Saturday in the first of UP's seven phases.
"This time 90%
of the Jats, particularly in the rural areas, will vote for Ajit Singh's RLD,''
declared a resident of a Jat colony in Muzaffarnagar where Sanjeev Balyan
lives. It's a stinging comment on the BJP's fortunes, coming as it does from a
person who has been a loyal supporter and worker of the saffron party for many
years. He cannot be identified for obvious reasons, but he had an interesting
tale to tell. He claims he captured nine booths in the area for the BJP in the
2014 election to help boost its vote tally. "This time,'' he confided,
"I'll vote for the BJP, because I have to as a worker. But I am not going
to mobilize votes like I did the last time. I just don't feel like putting in
the effort. I will go, cast my vote and then come straight home.''
I ask him
why he's so angry. He lists three reasons. One, he says, the BJP has been in
power at the centre for two and a half years but has done nothing to alleviate
the distress of Jat sugarcane farmers. They are owed money by private sugar
mills but the centre has not helped them to recover their dues. Secondly, the
community is upset over the police firing on Jats by the BJP government in
Haryana during last year's reservation agitation. According to him, Jats
in UP are waiting to vote against the BJP on February 11, and then will go to
Haryana to join their caste brethren who have resumed the reservation
agitation. Thirdly, he says, Jats have not forgiven the Modi government for
insulting the memory of their biggest leader, former Prime Minister Charan
Singh, when it denied Ajit Singh's request to turn his Lutyens' Delhi bungalow
into a memorial for his father.
"They threw Ajit Singh's belongings out on the road and turned him out of the house in which Charan Singh lived for so many years,'' he lamented. Jats, he says, have sworn vengeance.
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