In West UP’s ‘Jatland’, Polls Are a Litmus Test for Modi, Mayawati

The lack of support from the Jat community will mean a very different result for the BJP compared to 2014.

(Photo: The Quint)

It is afternoon in Achaunda, Partapur – a tiny village in Meerut. Chaudhary Rampal and Satpal have taken positions on a khat, engrossed in a discussion of the upcoming elections. Soon, cries of children can be heard from a distance, followed by political sloganeering; apparently, Pappu Gurjar is on his way.

A candidate from Chaudhary Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Gurjar greets everyone warmly on arrival, exhorting them to not repeat their last mistake. He clearly means the 2014 elections, where the BJP won the vote.

Chaudhary Rampal and Satpal promise Gurjar that the vote is for him to take this time. Reassured, Gurjar takes his leave to proceed with his campaign.

Barely ten minutes later, the two Chaudharies are visited by BJP’s young gun Somendra Tomar, also campaigning for votes. Tomar tells them that the biggest issue currently plaguing Meerut is the possibility of Muslim violence; and pleads with them to unite as Hindus to defeat the Muslim candidate. The men – both farmers from the Jat community – assure him of their votes.

As soon as Tomar leaves, I turn to them to ask what they mean by promising their votes to both the candidates.

Chaudhary Rampal and Satpal in Meerut’s Achaunda. (Photo: Shankar Arnimesh)

Without the slightest hesitation, they confess that their vote will go to Chaudharyji, by which they mean RLD’s Ajit Singh. When I probe further, inquiring into their lack of support for the BJP, they complain that the BJP did nothing for them.

In fact, they continue that the BJP only added insult to injury by evicting them from their bungalow on Tughlaq Road.

Jats Say ‘No, Thanks’ to BJP

The anti-BJP sentiment is almost palpable in west Uttar Pradesh’s Jat strongholds like Shamli, Baghpat, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar. The Muzaffarnagar riots of 2014 had spelled the end of Jat support for the BJP.

The reasons behind this disenchantment are many – the government’s lukewarm stance on Jat reservation, their attempt to quell the Haryana agitation, Ajit Singh’s eviction, et al. The BJP’s latest measure – the note ban – has proved to be the final nail in the coffin, transforming their irritation into anger.

This lack of support from the Jat community will mean a very different result for the BJP compared to its 2014 performance, where it won 60 of the 73 seats in western UP.

This laundry list of Jat dissatisfaction is precisely why Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his Sunday address in the Meerut rally, omitted Ajit Singh from his wordplay-filled attack on the SP, the Congress, Mayawati, and Akhilesh – accusing them all of running scams. The BJP has clearly decided to play safe where the RLD leader is concerned.

BJP’s Fate Hanging, Courtesy Ajit Singh

Ajit Singh’s loyal base might not win him any seats, but it is a crucial factor when it comes to deciding the BJP’s fate in western UP. The Jat vote alone, without some support from the Gurjars and the Muslim community, isn’t enough to win seats for the RLD, but without it the BJP will fail to realise its Lucknow dreams.

The RLD-Congress pre-poll alliance won merely nine seats in the 2012 elections. The good news for Ajit Singh this time is that wherever RLD candidates look set to defeat BJP candidates, the Muslim vote is also likely to stand with the RLD. Therefore, Muslim communities in places like Baraut, Baghpat, Shamli, and Chhaprauli are likely to vote for the RLD.

The Demon of Demonetisation

If you want to gauge the definitive political fallout of PM Modi’s note ban move, look no further than western UP where nearly all rural communities – whether Gurjar or Jat –stand united in their anger towards the BJP.

Rakesh from Gram Achaunda tells us of farmers who, failing to get any money from kharif crops, could buy neither seeds nor fertiliser. Some farmers barely struggled while others stood helplessly in fallow fields.

They can barely break even, let alone consider profits. This area, usually blessed with bountiful harvests of sugarcane and vegetables, stood barren this time. Farmers couldn’t afford tractors either for sowing or for transporting harvested crops to the markets.

With demonetisation sending wholesale vegetable prices crashing, farmers had to sell their produce for next to nothing. Sugarcane farmers were left furious after note ban hit sugar mills, stopping production.

Those who managed to sell their produce somehow are still waiting to encash their cheques. Wedding preparations turned into a nightmare that the Jats are not really sure they will entirely recover from.

The Politics of Polarisation

The biggest cause for worry for the BJP in west UP is their uneasy relationship with the Jat community.

Where BJP MP Yogi Adityanath compares western UP’s situation to that of 1990s Kashmir, Muzaffarnagar accused Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana invoke SP leader Azam Khan in every speech, calling for him to be sent to jail and for implicated Jat youth to be released.

BJP President Amit Shah, on the other hand, is busy invoking the cow slaughter narrative in his Meerut, Noida, Aligarh rallies.

The BJP has promised in its manifesto that it will ban all slaughterhouses in western UP and appoint special officers in police stations to deal with cow slaughter cases if voted to power.

These communal sentiments, however, don’t find a universal foothold in election-bound UP. The Jat-Muslim divide in the wake of the riots might not have completely healed, but neither communities want it to grow any further.

The BJP’s problem is twofold: It has failed to win unanimous Hindu support in crucial districts and the alienated Muslim vote is likely to bolster other communities’ support for the BJP’s rivals.

The SP-Congress Alliance Has Won Goodwill

The SP-Congress alliance and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav have been graced with the people’s goodwill.

The SP’s hold on certain seats might be weak but in rural areas, development in the form of cement roads and the dial-100 emergency service present a formidable challenge to the BJP’s promise of ‘achhe din’.

Mahesh and Sanjiv, two young men in Achaunda’s neighbouring village tell us that their roads used to be a collection of holes. Multiple meetings with BJP lawmakers yielded no results. It is then that Akhilesh Yadav stepped in, repairing broken roads and winning support.

Though the BSP is fielding Haji Yaqub Qureishi in this region – a strong candidate in western Meerut – there is wide support for the SP’s candidate as well.

When all is said and done, western UP is the litmus test for both Mayawati and the BJP. It’s for us to see whether Mayawati with her 97 Muslim candidates and the BJP with their politics of polarisation win UP.

What is clear is that an uneasiness of soul has replaced the BJP’s former swagger in their UP campaign. If the BJP fails to rally support for itself in western UP, its chances of making a recovery in later phases are slimmer still. The throne, in that case, will be left only for the Samajwadi Party.

(Shankar Arnimesh is a senior journalist. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

(Translated from Hindi Quint.)