BAGHPAT: Along the narrow lanes of Baghpat’s Chhaprauli Dehat village, the smiling pictures of former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh and his grandson Jayant Chaudhary don the walls of many houses. It is not an uncommon sight in Baghpat, the land of Jat politics and home to Charan Singh’s family. The peasant leader, who was posthumously conferred with Bharat Ratna, represented Baghpat in Lok Sabha for three terms beginning from 1977. While his son Ajit Singh won Baghpat seven times, his grandson Jayant Chaudhary, lost the seat to BJP’s Satyapal Singh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
However, political equations have changed drastically with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chowdhury joining forces with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) camp. As Baghpat goes to polls on April 26, it will be an acid test for Jayant who stitched up an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. In the three-cornered contest, RLD’s Raj Kumar Sagwan, SP’s Amarpal Sharma, and BSP’s Praveen Bansal are in the fray. Interestingly, it is the first time since 1977 that the RLD fielded a candidate from outside the Chaudhary clan in Baghpat.
Jayant’s cross over to the saffron camp amid seat-sharing talks with his INDIA ally Samajwadi Party (SP) dealt a rude shock for the opposition bloc. The jury is still out on Jayant’s move, says Lokesh Tyagi, a Jat farmer in Pali village.
However, Jaikishan Singh, an ardent supporter of RLD, differs.
“Chowdhury Charan saab brought glory to our village. I don’t think the Modi government gave him the award to get RLD on their side. My family has been voting for the Chaudhary family for generations. Jayant will carry forward his grandfather's legacy and we continue to support him,” says Singh. It is a common refrain echoed by most of the Jat community in the sugar belt. The alliance will reap benefits for the NDA as it will help consolidate Jat votes, says BJP supporter Kishen Lal Saini, pointing out that the loyalties of the Jats were divided between the BJP and the RLD earlier. “Most of the Jats were unhappy with the RLD's alliance with the SP. BJP is the natural ally of RLD. Akhilesh’s party is only for Muslims,” says Saini.
For the same reason, Jayant Chaudhary lost to BJP’s candidate in the Baghpat seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when it had tied up the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), he says. The caste fault lines that emerged after the 2013 riots in the neighbouring Muzaffarnagar continue to cast a shadow on the relationship between the communities. Though the region has seen a revival of healthy relations between Muslims and Jats after the farmers’ agitation in 2019, Jayant’s migration to the BJP is a blow to the unity efforts initiated by many including farmer leader Rakesh Tikait. Though the dominant Jat population will hold sway in the outcome of the election, Baghpat also has a significant Muslim population.
It is not easy to bury the hatchet with the BJP, says Anwar Rashid, another RLD supporter who runs a hardware shop in Chhaprauli. “We always called the BJP anti-farmer and anti-Jat. However, we will stand by Jayant,” says Rashid. Livelihood issues will be dominant in this election rather than caste equations, says elderly Jat leader Virendra Chaudhary. He says that the resentment over sugarcane dues, inflation, and rising unemployment will cost dearly to the ruling BJP.
