Having finished their morning shift, a group of bus drivers working for a prominent private school in Haryana’s Rewari, are busy playing cards under a tree on Friday morning. Further away, a few more drivers are seated on a makeshift bench at a tea stall, caught in a heated political debate with barely a week to go for voting in the high-stakes Assembly election.
Sipping tea, Gajender, a resident of Bharawas village in Bawal Assembly constituency, says the mood in his village “is largely pro-BJP”. He claims some 40-odd youth in his village, which has over 2,500 voters, got jobs on merit during the BJP rule. Stressing how one of them, appointed as a clerk, was from a poor Scheduled Caste family that could not afford even ₹10 as bribe, he adds that “this was unthinkable in the previous regimes”. Nodding in agreement, Raj Kumar of Gokalpur village in Rewari Assembly segment says many youth from his village too had landed jobs as teachers and police personnel on merit. “This”, he said, “had given a ray of hope to the poor” but concedes the number of jobs being given under the present regime was inadequate.
Backing up his claims, Rajendra, a resident of Siha village in the Kosli Assembly constituency, says the Ahirwal belt — a reference to the Gurugram-Rewari-Mahendragarh region dominated by the Yadavs (Ahirs) — has seen all-round development over the past decade. The Yadavs are classified under the Other Backward Class (OBC).
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“The National Highway 152D now connects this region to Chandigarh, the State capital, and the Delhi-Mumbai highway is also partially open. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of All-India Institute of Medical Sciences at Majra Mustil Balkhi village, just 25 km from here,” says Mr. Rajendra.
Villagers play cards in the Ateli Vidhan Sabha seat ahead of the assembly polls at Dhanonda in Mahendragarh district of Haryana | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
Several projects left incomplete by the Congress regime, such as the Kundli-Manesar Expressway, too were completed by the BJP, Rakesh, the tea stall owner, pitches in.
The Ahirwal belt, mostly bordering Rajasthan, lies in the the southern part of the agrarian State. The BJP made a clean sweep winning all the 11 Assembly seats in this region in 2014 after prominent community leader Rao Inderjit Singh, Union Minister and Gurugram MP, joined the party quitting Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha election. In 2019, the BJP retained eight Assembly segments with the Congress winning two and an Independent emerging victorious in one.
In the Jat-dominated Rathiwas village in Pataudi, where Congress’s Pearl Chaudhary is pitted against the BJP’s Bimla Chaudhary, Jagbir rues lack of job opportunities. He is also critical of the rising prices and hassles caused by the BJP government’s e-initiatives such as Parivar Pehchan Patra and Property IDs, saying “these are some of the major issues in this part of South Haryana”. A small-time farmer, Mr. Jagbir says that Agnipath scheme had dashed the hopes of several youth aspiring for permanent jobs in the Army.
In Ateli, one of the four Assembly constituencies in Mahendragarh district, Mr. Rao Inderjit Singh’s daughter Arti Rao fights the “outsider” tag. She is caught in a multi-cornered contest with the Congress’s Anita Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party’s Thakur Attar Lal.
A resident of Dhanoda village in Ateli, Rattan Lal Sharma, a former journalist, says the farmer and wrestler protests have had little impact in this region. Sitting next to him, Krishan Kumar, 47, claims the region remained neglected during the previous Congress regime, with the government’s only focus being the Sonipat-Rohtak-Jhajjar belt, the bastion of former Congress Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
“Over the past 10 years, basic amenities like drinking water, roads, and power supply have improved in these parts, though depleting groundwater still remains a concern,” says retired police Assistant Sub-Inspector Anoop Yadav. He added that “there is fear that the region might be pushed towards backwardness with the return of the Congress.”
In Nangal Chaudhary, caste equations don’t seem to favour bureaucrat-turned-politician and Haryana Minister Abhe Singh Yadav, the BJP nominee facing a tough contestant in Congress’s Manju Chaudhary. The latter is the wife of former Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) leader Mula Ram. Vijay, who runs a sweet shop here, says there is no major opposition to the Agnipath scheme here, though it is one of the regions in the State with a long tradition of serving in the Army.
Poor urban infrastructure leading to severe waterlogging during monsoon, pollution, traffic jams, civic woes and the BJP government’s failure to expand the existing Metro network and put in place a robust city bus service are some of the grievances of the voters in predominantly urban constituencies of Gurugram and Badshahpur.
Mr. Rao Inderjit Singh’s oft-repeated claim to chief ministership too has resonated with the electorate in this region, with many saying that having a Chief Minister from South Haryana would give further impetus to its development.
Published - September 29, 2024 01:33 am IST
