Duddhi and Obra, the only two Assembly constituencies reserved for Scheduled Tribes in Uttar Pradesh, seem stuck in a time warp. The two seats in backward Sonbhadra district go to the polls on Monday — the last day of polling in the state — with the all-too-familiar issues of roti-kapda-makaan, besides clean drinking water, as their basic demands.
The four seats of the Naxal-hit tribal belt (besides Duddhi and Obra, Robertsganj and Ghorawal), which share their boundaries with Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, also have unemployment as a major issue. In 2017, the BJP won three out of four seats in this tribal belt, while its alliance partner, the Apna Dal(S), won one (Duddhi).
While the BJP is banking on the projects that it inaugurated in the past five years — a medical college, housing schemes, a project to provide clean drinking water — resentment has been building up since most of these schemes are yet to get off the ground.
The Samajwadi Party, meanwhile, is banking on its established tribal leaders in a region where land is the main currency and which has in the past seen clashes over land rights — in 2015, over the Kanhar irrigation project, and in 2019, when 10 tribals were killed in Umbha.
In the current Assembly, Duddhi is represented by BJP ally Apna Dal(S) MLA Hariram. But this election, the BJP has decided to contest the seat on its own and has chosen Ram Dular, a tribal leader.
A miffed Hariram has switched sides and is now the BSP candidate, but locals say much of the anger over unfulfilled promises is directed at Hariram and therefore, the fight could be between Ram Dular and SP’s Vijay Singh. In the 2017 election, about 8,500 people of this constituency had chosen the NOTA option.
Vijay Singh is a seven-time MLA and a former minister who has won from the seat both on Congress and SP tickets. His supporters have been assuring voters that the Gond leader will get a space in the Cabinet if the party is voted to power. Singh had contested the 2017 election as a BSP candidate.
The Congress has fielded a woman candidate, Basanti Panika.
Campaigning for Ram Dular, Yogi Adityanath had promised to provide clean drinking water to the region. Reason: The high fluoride content in the water here has been blamed for several ailments among people. The government had approved an RO water project, but work on it is still underway in some regions.
Sensing the anti-incumbency in neighbouring Duddhi, five months before the elections, the BJP government in UP made Obra’s sitting MLA Sanjiv Kumar, a Gond leader, a minister in the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet. The party hopes the course-correction will see the party through this election.
The SP has left Obra to its alliance partner, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, which has fielded Rakesh Kumar Gond. The Congress, on the other hand, is banking on Ram Raj, a young tribal leader who had led the 2019 protest over land in Umbha.
After the incident, however, the village was turned into a model village with pucca homes, land rights to farmers and even piped drinking. While the BJP is focusing on this turnaround, the Opposition is attempting to keep the focus on the incident