Congress' Alwar campaign invokes rising crimes, but skips lynchings: Report

Azmat, 27, recovers on a charpaai with his son at his home in Jaisinghpur. He survived an attack by cow vigilantes when transporting cattle which left Pehlu Khan dead. (Image: Reuters)

The Congress has refused to invoke the issues of cow vigilantism and mob violence to avoid distancing Hindu voters while underscoring the issue of rising crime rate in Rajasthan's Alwar region, according to a report by The Indian Express.

Alwar region has witnessed a number of incidents of mob violence, including the one in Behror, where Pehlu Khan was lynched by alleged cow vigilantes in April 2017. In Ramgarh constituency, Umar Khan was killed by alleged cow vigilantes in November 2017, while Rakbar Khan was killed in July this year.

According to a Congress leader from the region, people refuse to turn up at their rallies if the issue of mob vigilantism is brought up.

"Addressing a rally, I referred to lynchings and said people should not take the law into their own hands. The next day, our workers told us that people have refused to come to rallies. This is the state we are living in," the leader said. "Forget about Muslims, we cannot even talk about violence. We decided then that we will concentrate only on crime and not refer to lynchings at all," the leader added.

However, for the Congress in-charge of the campaign, Sudhanshu Joshi, not bringing up topics such as lynchings is the way to avoid polarisation. "For us, raising the Pehlu Khan issue is not beneficial. In fact, it will polarise this election, which we cannot afford," Joshi told the newspaper, adding that the Pehlu Khan case was "portrayed as something else and defamed Behror".

A senior party functionary said since the Muslim population in the Behror account for less than 1,000 votes, "they have no choice anyway".

"They will vote for us. We don't need to anger the Yadav community here," the party functionary said.

The Yadav community accounts for 70 percent of the 2.2 lakh electorate in the Behror region. Of the nine candidates in the region, eight are Yadavs, the report states.

Instead of bringing up mob lynching, according to Joshi, Congress has decided to focus on law and order issues in the constituency.

According to the report, official police records have shown a steady increase in crime such as murder and abductions in the region.

"The land acquisition process for the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor has begun and this has dramatically increased property prices. Several crimes are now linked to property," a senior police officer told the newspaper.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, has labeled the Congress' campaign as baseless. "The BJP government has clamped down on crime across the region and the Congress is only spreading lies. They have no issues to talk about, so they bring this up. The people can see through this," former BJP Alwar president Dharamveer Sharma said.

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