Will Modi factor help Varun Gandhi in tough fight in Pilibhit?

In the village of Niwa Dandi, it does not take much for the layers to fall off. A group of women who had been insisting sab badhiya hai (all is well) now admit, “[Narendra] Modi toh badhiya hai, lekin unke neeche wale log theek nahin hain (Modi is good, but the people below him are not good).”

The women sitting on a rug (there are chairs for the men), were waiting for Varun Gandhi (or, formally, Feroze Varun Gandhi) since 8am. One among them, Champa Varma, reels off a list of questions she wanted to ask him. “How is electricity free if I have to pay Rs 250? I do not even use a bulb, just a television. How are there so many families without toilets? Why do the lanes have drains on one side and not the other?” she goes on.

When Varun finally appeared, at close to 11am, he made a quick, emotional speech. “This is your election. This is my own village. If there is ever any trouble for you, I will have my head chopped off, but not let you hang your head. Give me your blessings,” he says. After some handshakes and a few selfies, he is gone. Champa, who has had no chance to ask her questions, frets, “He should have given five minutes to listen to our problems.”

In the five Assembly constituencies that constitute Pilibhit, the unavailability of the MP is a common concern. They are not talking about Varun, though; it is about his mother Maneka Gandhi, the sitting MP of Pilibhit. It is her sixth term from here. Varun’s first term as a MP was from Pilibhit in 2009. But in 2014, he ran from Sultanpur. This year, there has been a seat switch between mother and son.

Earlier, while addressing a rally on the grounds of the Drummond Government Inter College in Pilibhit, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav makes fun of the seat switch. “Go ask the people of Sultanpur how bad was the tea he made. Do you want bad tea as well? Do you want what Sultanpur has rejected?” he asks a cheering crowd.

Party insiders whisper about Varun squandering his win in Sultanpur. They say the BJP top leadership was reluctant to give him a ticket. While protests over ticket distribution are not unusual, in Pilibhit, it had reached a crescendo a few days before Varun’s name was announced.

Four MLAs, a former minister of state and three local leaders held a press conference to ask the BJP not to force an outsider on them and “to respect local emotions and aspirations”. A signed letter of that demand was also released to the media.

Some say that the unusual show of protest was orchestrated by “leaders from Delhi”. One of the MLAs who protested was Ramsaran Verma. He is now a common sight by Varun’s side on the campaign trail. In Niwa Dandi, Ramsaran kicks off the public meeting by asking people to vote for Varun if they want development, upliftment and progress. However, speaking to THE WEEK, he says, “Development is a non-issue in this election. It is all about nationalism and Modiji.”

Back in Pilibhit, Nizamuddin Ali, 76, who has travelled over 30km to attend Akhilesh’s rally says, “Pilibhit is where it was 30 years ago. All Maneka Gandhi has done is to give our homes to tigers. The mother-son’s hate for Muslims is so evident. We might have voted for any other worthy candidate. But, them? Never.”

Ali’s complaint against the tigers is centred on the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, which was notified in 2014. Large parts of the 712.88sqkm area remain unfenced, resulting in 24 deaths till date.

It was an issue Varun had to confront one evening on his campaign trail as he received news that a man had been mauled to death. “They were all shouting slogans against me,” he says. “They said your mother has let all the tigers loose. They calmed down when I told them that the area was to be ring fenced, but the state government did not give funds for it. I told them that the first thing that I will do when I come is to ring fence your villages.”

Varun's main opponent is Hemraj Verma, the 43-year-old SP-BSP alliance candidate who is banking on the Muslim, dalit and Kurmi vote from the district’s 16.9 lakh-strong electorate. Hemraj has structured his campaign around the contest between the Dilli wala (Delhi man) and “a local son of a poor farmer”.

The latter though is an inaccurate description as Hemraj’s sprawling home in Tah village can easily accommodate over a dozen large cars in the front yard. His grandfather, mother and brother are active in local politics; Hemraj himself was a MLA between 2012 and 2017, and a minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government.

“These are people with big names but no work,” says Hemraj. “Our rail connectivity remains poor. There is no engineering, agriculture or medical college in the district. There is large-scale migration for employment. With a local MP, people can at least shout zindabad-murdabad in front of his home. But how do you approach an MP who does not even live among you?”

However, when quizzed on what his own contribution to Pilibhit as a minister was, Hemraj sheepishly admits, “I was a junior minister. It is not a policy-making position, more like a helper to the minister.”

Hemraj’s ministerial stint was not without controversies. Ashwini Kumar Agarwal, district president of the rice mills association, says, “When he was minister, he only harassed us by launching a string of searches on the mills on the pretext of stock checking. If our MP has not helped us, she has at least not harassed us. It is just the Modi factor at play.”

Among Niwa Dandi’s women, there is little doubt who they are voting for. Satyalata Varma, a 20-year-old graduate, sums it up for them. “The MP is not important. We are all voting for Modiji,” she says. All questions, it seems, are subsumed under that one name.