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The BJP rose as a formidable political force in western UP in 2014, a year after the Muzaffarnagar riots. In the rest of the crucial heartland state too, in 2014, the BJP turned a new leaf, as it swept the Lok Sabha polls riding the Narendra Modi wave. In the process the BJP routed key regional players like the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had between them held power in the state for over a decade.
Two BJP leaders — Sanjeev Balyan and Sangeet Som — rose to prominence in the western UP region at the time. Both hail from the Muzaffarnagar belt. Both were accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. While Balyan is a Jat leader, Som belongs to the Rajput community.
With the BJP having faced reverses in the recent Lok Sabha polls in UP after a decade of absolute dominance in the state, the two leaders have now made news for being at loggerheads with each other.
Their verbal spat began after Balyan lost the Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat by about 25,000 votes to Harendra Malik of the SP. He accused Som, who is a former MLA from Sardhana in Muzaffarnagar, of being behind the Rajput panchayats being against the BJP before the polls which, he claimed, split the Hindu votes.
“He (Som) supported the SP candidate in the election. He facilitated the Rajput community panchayats which spoilt the atmosphere in western UP and divided the votes. This affected the results in Kairana and Saharanpur too,” Balyan alleged.
Som retorted, “Not a single BJP worker likes Balyan. People even told the party leadership that he should not be given the ticket. He did not work for party men in the past 10 years. He lost because BJP workers became inactive.”
He also said, “At an organisational meeting in the presence of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the state BJP president, Balyan himself demanded that there should be no interference in Budhana and Charthawal Assembly segments, whose poll management he personally looked after. He lost both, including Budhana where he lives. He even lost in Soram village in Budhana, which is the biggest village of Jats. How can he blame me for his defeat?”
Som also claimed: “I did not attend any of these (Rajput) panchayats. I actually tried to do damage control, convincing people to get votes polled for the party. The BJP did not lose in Rajput villages.”
On Tuesday, while Som was addressing a press conference to respond to Balyan’s initial allegations against him, a statement drafted on the former MLA’s letterhead was distributed outside his home. In it, Balyan was accused of corruption.
On Thursday, Som distanced himself from this leaflet and said an “unidentified person” was behind it. He also said he had registered a police complaint.
Meanwhile, Balyan dismissed the allegations made in the statement. Responding to the allegations, Balyan’s friend Sanjeev Sehrawat, who is mentioned in the pamphlets, denied the accusations and threatened legal action against Som. “I have sent a defamation notice of Rs 10 crore to Sangeet Som,” Sehrawat said. “If Som fails to respond within a week, I will proceed with legal action against him.”
Balyan, 51, belongs to a locally influential family. He studied veterinary sciences, acquired a doctorate from Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar, and also served as an assistant professor and a veterinary surgeon.
His political rise coincided with the growth of the BJP among Jats of western UP after the Muzaffarnagar riots that caused a deep faultline between Jats and Muslims in UP’s sugarcane belt, which has significant populations of both. The Jats, a dominant caste which for decades supported the Bharatiya Lok Dal of Chaudhary Charan Singh and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of his son Ajit Singh, shifted their allegiance to the BJP, which was more than willing to accommodate them.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who was looking after the UP campaign of Modi in 2014, was instrumental in this shift. Ready to replace the RLD as the preferred party of the Jats, the BJP needed new Jat leaders. Balyan had by then been accused and booked for allegedly taking part in a September 2013 mahapanchayat despite prohibitory orders, which is said to have inflamed passions of people at a time when there was sharp polarisation. In him, the BJP found a suitable Jat leader.
This was the beginning of Balyan’s rise. In 2014, he was fielded from Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat, which he won by 4 lakh votes, defeating Kadir Rana of the BSP. He was inducted into the Modi 1.0 government as the Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing in 2014, and was appointed the MoS for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation from 2016 to 2017.
In the 2019 polls, despite an SP-BSP-RLD grand alliance, Balyan defeated RLD leader Ajit Singh from Muzaffarnagar with a narrow margin of over 6,000 votes. He was appointed the MoS for Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Dairying in the Modi government 2.0.
Som, 46, also came into prominence around 2013, though he had been politically active even before that. Sources said he had joined the SP via its former leader late Amar Singh’s network, before shifting to the BJP in 2011.
In 2012, Som won the Sardhana seat on a BJP ticket in the UP Assembly elections. Like Balyan, Som was also an accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, and was booked under the National Security Act (NSA).
The Justice Vishnu Sahai Commission report on the Muzaffarnagar riots named Som among the people responsible for inciting the riots. He dismissed the report.
Som, who has often courted controversies with his remarks, won the Sardhana seat on the BJP ticket again in 2017. He, however, lost the seat to the SP’s candidate in the 2022 polls.
