In Kairana, sugarcane, stray cattle and caste alliances will decide the Lok Sabha election

09 April 2019
An Indian farmer carries sugarcane to load on a tractor to sell it at a nearby sugar mill in Modinagar in Ghaziabad, on 31 January 2018.
PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images
An Indian farmer carries sugarcane to load on a tractor to sell it at a nearby sugar mill in Modinagar in Ghaziabad, on 31 January 2018.
PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images

In the 2014 general elections, Hukum Singh, a Hindu-Gujjar leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, won in western Uttar Pradesh’s Kairana constituency, marking the party’s first victory from the seat since 1998. Singh passed away in February 2018, necessitating a bypoll in the constituency. The opposition parties—the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress—entered into an informal tie up and fielded Tabassum Hasan, a Muslim-Gujjar and former member of parliament from Kairana, on an RLD ticket. In the bypoll three months later, Hasan defeated Mriganka Singh, the BJP candidate and Hukum’s daughter, by over forty thousand votes.

A combination of factors secured Hasan’s victory. The RLD, with a predominantly Jat voter base, focused on the plight of Kairana’s sugarcane farmers—till that month, six sugarcane mills in the constituency reportedly owed the farmers Rs 777 crore. A controversy over BJP leaders objecting to a picture of Mohammad Ali Jinnah put up on the walls of the Aligarh Muslim University allowed the RLD to brand the election as a fight between ganna, or sugarcane, versus Jinnah. Moreover, the RLD rallying behind a Muslim candidate secured votes from both the Jat and Muslim communities.

The Kairana parliamentary constituency has five assembly segments—Shamli, Thana Bhawan and Kairana from Shamli district, and Gangoh and Nakur from Saharanpur district. According to estimates in media reports, the constituency has around 16.6 lakh voters, comprising approximately 5.5 lakh Muslims, 2.5 lakh Dalits and 1.7 lakh Jats. This year, the RLD, the SP and the BSP are repeating their alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Hasan is representing the alliance in Kairana on an SP ticket, whereas the BJP has fielded Pradeep Choudhury, a member of legislative assembly from the Gangoh assembly constituency.

Tushar Dhara is a reporting fellow with The Caravan. He has previously worked with Bloomberg News, Indian Express and Firstpost and as a mazdoor with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan.

Keywords: Elections 2019 Kairana Bharatiya Janata Party Samajwadi Party Bahujan Samaj Party Rashtriya Lok Dal Congress
COMMENT