Kairana bypoll: Will the Jats repose their faith in BJP?

The unwavering support of the Jats had helped the BJP score a spectacular sweep of western Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 assembly polls as well.

Kairana is a challenge for all the five parties that are contesting in the bypolls. Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party and BJP have tricky battle in Kairana because out of its nearly 1.6 million voters, there are at least 500,000 Muslims and 250,000 Dalits. However, the constituency also has a considerable population of Jat, Kashyap, Gujjar, Saini, Brahmin, Bania and Rajput communities, who have traditionally supported the BJP.

In 2014, BJP’s Hukum Singh had won the Lok Sabha poll in the aftermath of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots collecting 5,65,909 votes against Samajwadi Party’s Nahind Hasan, who polled 2,29,081.

Both BJP and RLD are taking efforts to woo the Jat community. While the BJP is trying to retain their 2014 sway with the Jats, RLD supremo Ajit Singh is trying to win back the votes of his community who had lost ground to the BJP in his home ground culminating his own defeat in the nearby Baghpat Lok Sabha seat in 2014.

The grand RLD-SP-BSP alliance claims it has the support of 5.80 lakh Muslims, 2.5 lakh Dalits and over 1.70 lakh Jats in Kairana, accounting for roughly 60 per cent of the electorate. On the other hand, reports suggest that BJP leaders are giving assurances that cases against Jat youths, allegedly involved in riots, would be withdrawn.

But the Jat community seems to be unhappy with the present government. According to a Hindustan Times report, Jat leaders and village elders, in particular, are the most vocal regarding the complaints against the current regime. At election meetings, they allege that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told the Supreme Court in an affidavit that it cannot pay farmers one-and-a-half times the cost of their produce.

Worried that they have political clout, the Jat community says that the Yogi Adityanath government in the state has almost doubled the cost of the electricity farmers use and that no one seems to be taking the Jat community seriously.

In addition, BJP’s man in-charge of the elections in Kairana, Sanjeev Balyan, admits that the Jats will mostly go with the RLD, which is why his strategy has been largely confined to mobilising voters from the upper caste and non-Jat other backward classes (OBCs) to turn up on the day of polling.