Ajit Singh (RLD)
Won from Baghpat: 1989, 1991, 1996, 1997, 1999
Votes for Singh: 48.26 per cent
- Average farmer’s income has fallen by Rs 13,000 a season in the past two years
- Second-worst crime district in western Uttar Pradesh
- Canals dry up. Average depth of tubewells increases to 17 ft.
- No district hospital, hardly any healthcare
Jat-Dominated Baghpat on the fertile banks of Yamuna, just 40 km from Delhi, transferred its loyalty for the late Chaudhary Charan Singh seamlessly to his son Ajit Singh in 1989. The constituency’s dogged faithfulness continues, but tempers run high about years of misrule.
"We are not starving, but that’s it," says Sukhpal Singh, inching forward his sugarcane-laden bullock-cart in a long line outside the SBEC sugar mill. Says Adesh Kumar: "On February 18, we received sugar in lieu of cash for the cane we supplied in November. Since then no payments, cash or kind. We don’t know when we’ll be paid next and how much."
The situation is desperate and people fight over what little they have. Last year saw 102 murders, most of them over property, 30 looting incidents and 14 riots. And if you are shot or have a dog set on you by an angry neighbour, you’ll have to rush to Delhi or Meerut for treatment. Baghpat district, created in 1997, still does not have a hospital. The six health centres are little more than first-aid clinics.
Kumar predicts that farmer suicides and starvation deaths will become realities in a few years. Since 2001-2002, the going rate for sugarcane has fallen from Rs 95 per quintal to Rs 76. An average farmer, supplying say 700 quintals per season, has seen a Rs 13,000 drop in income in the past two years.
Baghpat gets electricity for some stray four hours a day, that too at odd hours of the night. Meanwhile, the canals are drying up one by one, choked with silt, and the depth of an average tube well has reached 17 feet.
Ajit Singh has spent most of his MP’s fund on roads. But they are so badly constructed, like the one connecting Baraut and Chaprauli, that repairs have to start immediately after they are built. Some of them, rebuilt higher every year, now cause flooding in the lower lying villages. Yet, explain a group of wizened patriarchs, smoking hookahs in the sun: "Everyone knows Ajit Singh will win, no matter what. It is a question of biradri (community) after all."
