Jat vote scripts SP debut in two seats

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Jats, who are traditional Rashtriya Lok Dal supporters, openly supported the BJP. This time around, they ignored BJP’s Jat candidate Hemendra Pal in Bijnor and voted for SP’s Ruchi Veera who is from Vaishya community.

BJP MP Kunwar Bhartendu Singh, who had vacated the seat is a Jat, campaigned for Pal.

Bijnor has nearly 75,000 Jat voters and shares its borders with Muzaffarnagar that witnessed communal riots last year in September.

Veera, who polled 25,173 votes in the 2012 assembly polls, bagged 1.01 lakh votes defeating the BJP candidate by 11,567 votes.

“It is true that Jats voted for the SP in this bypoll. They are fed up of communal politics. Most of them believe that they were carried away by the BJP. They supported us and we won in most of the Jat dominated villages,” claimed Sanjay Lathar.

The Muslims, too, supported SP but their polling percentage was far less than the Jats.

SP has won in Jat villages like Bilaspur, Kishanpur, Raipur I, Raipur II, Bahadurpur, Ganjalpur, Bhojpur, Moinuddinpur, Fazalpur, Kaziwala, Muzaffarpur, Suhawadi Khurd, Suhawadi Buzurg, Maqsoodpur Hafiz, Madawali, Amipur, Chatra, Nayagaon, Jamalpur Pathani and Taraqpur Roopchand. SP had lost most of these polling booths in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.

Even as SP was not hopeful of a win on the two seats, it made some strategic moves ahead of the bypolls with the Jat votebank in mind. It demanded that the country;s highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna, be bestowed on Jat icon and former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh. Then, nearly 60 Jat leaders, including Shomendra Singh, who were expelled from SP, were reinducted before the bypolls. Even former minister Swami Omvesh was poached from RLD. SP had also approached RLD’s local leaders.

In Thakurdwara constituency, the party had sent Jat leader Kuldeep Ujjawal who was instrumental in managing 25,000-odd Jat voters,  which also included Vishnoi Jat community.  SP candidate Nawab Jan Khan polled 1.11 lakh votes, winning by a margin of 27,743 votes.

“Most of the Jats voted for SP. The election could not have been won with only Muslim votes,”  a minister, who was sent to the constituency for poll management, said.