Gujarat’s prosperous tobacco belt has a dark underbelly—Ode village, part of Umreth assembly seat. It was here that 26 people from the minority community were burnt alive at the height of the communal tension in 2002.

This constituency in Anand district has a predominant mix of Kshatriyas, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and a small number of Muslims who work as farmers and labourers on tobacco farms.

This election, the BJP’s sitting MLA Vishnu Patel is pitted against former district BJP president Vadodia Lalsinh, who is contesting on a Congress ticket. The BSP and Shiv Sena have also put up candidates.

However, Muslims voters and Congress supporters are not happy that the party had given the ticket to Lalsinh, a former BJP hand. Locals alleged that Lalsinh had helped those involved in the 2002 riots. In 1998, the Congress’s Subhash Shelat defeated Lalsinh and in 2002, the BJP won from Umreth.

Umreth region’s prosperity is limited to the tobacco traders while its 200-odd Muslim families work mainly on tobacco fields and are concentrated in four pockets—Sarewali Bhagol, Malao Bhagol, Pirawali Bhagol and Ode Nawabpura.

Twenty-two people were arrested for the March 1, 2002 massacre in Ode. The victims’ family members claimed that six other people had gone missing but the authorities did nothing about finding them.