In Ludhiana’s migrant hubs, a chorus: Need a voice of our own

Ram Prasad hails from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, but Ludhiana has been his home for the last 20 years. “I have spent half my life here, my children were born here. I can speak better Punjabi than most Punjabis. You will find migrants in every sector in the state,” says the 40-year-old.

Which is why, he says, he doesn’t understand Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi’s comment at a roadshow in Batala, where he asked Punjabis to unite so that “bhaiyas” from UP, Delhi and Bihar can’t rule the state. “We are also Punjabis now… so why speak of us as Punjabis, UP wale and Biharis?” wonders Prasad.

Migrants, mostly from UP and Bihar, who have over the years come to Ludhiana to work in its industrial hubs before making the city their home, form a key force in the district, with an estimated 19 lakh of them spread across its 14 Assembly seats.

Five of these Ludhiana seats – Sahnewal, Ludhiana East, Ludhiana West, Ludhiana South and Ludhiana North – are considered migrant hubs, apart from Jalandhar, Amritsar, Phagwara, Hoshiarpur, Bathinda Urban, Mohali and Fatehgarh Sahib elsewhere in the state.

In the migrant hubs of Dhandari and Ram Nagar in Sahnewal constituency and Makkar Colony and Atam Nagar in Atam Nagar constituency, farm laws, sacrilege and drugs – issues which dominate the conversation elsewhere – hardly figure in discussions around the polls. Instead, the talk is about greater political representation for migrants and better living conditions.

“There are over 50,000 migrant voters in Sahnewal constituency that has a population of 2.98 lakh. Migrant votes form the majority in five wards here. I wish some Poorvanchali neta got a chance to contest elections in Punjab,” says N K Mishra, secretary of BJP Rural, Ludhiana district.

While Sharanjit Singh Dhillon of the SAD is the sitting MLA here, the Congress has fielded former CM Rajinder Kaur Bhattal’s son-in-law Vikram Bajwa. Harpreet Singh Garcha of the SAD (Sanyukt) is the candidate of the BJP alliance here.

The only candidate from the Purvanchali community in Ludhiana is Anil Gupta, fighting on a Sanyukt Samaj Morcha ticket from Ludhiana South. An accountant, Gupta hails from UP.

“When the first lockdown was imposed in 2020, several migrants started going back to their homes as factories shut down and many lost jobs. That’s when I realised that we migrants had no one to talk for us,” says Gupta.