Indian sugar mills association

In Tikait home, sweet cane prices might not be enough

Date:	28 Feb 2012

Source:	The Indian Express

Reporter:	Ravish Tiwari

News ID:	945

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Sisauli, Muzaffarnagar, Feb 26: Residents of Sisaul, home of late farmers` leader Mahendra Singh Tikait whose casteist remark against Mayawati had led to an unprecedented standoff between Jat peasants and the state administration in 2008, are thankful about Mayawati`s sugarcane pricing and transparent police recruitment.

Whatever help this could have give the BSP in this sugarcane-producing district of Muzaffarnagar, however, appears to have been undone with Jat voters citing administrative high-handedness against them and bias towards Dalits, who have faced oppression from landed communities.

“Mulayam too gave fair cane prices, but Mayawati gave better than that,” says Krishnapal Chaudhary sitting with over a dozen elderly and middle-aged Jats around a hookah in Sisauli, part of Budhana seat. “She also got police recruitment done without bribery; 55 youths from Sisauli alone are either undergoing training or have already joined the service. Had it been the Mulayam regime, no one could have got recruitment except Yadavs.”

Having agreed on that, everyone complains about how police behave once any complaint has been filed by Dalits, and about alleged misuse of the administration by the local BSP MLA, Yograj Singh, a Jat himself, to settle scores against rivals.

“We have few complaints against the elephant sitting in Lucknow. But the BSP`s elephants are roaming here, trampling everyone using the police,” says an elderly Jat. “They need to be taken care of this time.”

They rue having voted for Mahendra Singh Tikait`s son last time, saying the 10,000 votes he got ended up helping the BSP candidate win. “This time, we know the elephant must be tamed and it will be.”

The disenchantment is visble in Assembly seats across the district, with traders, Muslims and other non-Dalits all complaining about corruption and the high-handedness of the police.

“We had to pay higher prices for construction material than those prescribed because the contractor has to pay those above... There has been no attempt to check that. In fact, it has been promoted by stopping other crushers from benefiting; the BSP`s favourite supplier has a monopoly,” says Praveen Gupta, a retail trader of building material in Muzaffarnagar. Most traders say they will probably vote for the SP.

What is likely to raise Mayawati`s concerns is that large sections of Muslims, who had backed her in the Lok Sabha elections by electing Kadir Rana and Tabassum Begum as MPs (that was before Prabuddha Nagar was carved out of the distrct), are not ready to align with the BSP this time.

Shamsad Ahmed is an auto dealer engaged in selling second-hand bikes after improving them. “All such dealers have been harassed by the police for selling stolen bikes,” he says in Khatauli. “What did we get after electing Kadir Rana? Nothing except harassment,” he adds, predicting that most Muslims would vote for the SP and some for the Congres-RLD candidate.

Many Muslims have rooted for the Samajwadi Party party while the Jat community has sounded a war cry to rally behind the Congress-RLD candidates, setting up a one-on-one fight. The BSP faces anti-incumbency across the seats of Purqazi, Charthawal, Budhana, Khatauli, Shamli and Muzaffarnagar.

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