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Haryana elections: Sleepy town hopes newfound fame helps bring jobs, roads
Saini, just like Ladwa, found himself in the spotlight when the BJP elevated the parliamentarian from Kurukshetra constituency as Haryana chief minister this March, replacing party veteran Manohar Lal Khattar weeks before the general elections.
Around 20km east of Kurukshetra on the dusty Saharanpur expressway, a languid town is coming to terms with its newfound celebrity. The vacant tea stalls, sparse grocery shops and tranquil street corners are now firmly in the past. Ladwa town is now one of the nerve-centres of the Haryana elections. After all, chief minister Nayab Singh Saini is the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidate from the small town of just 196,000 voters.
“Party workers from both the Congress and the BJP have been visiting the town. The village has never witnessed something like this before. I wish the limelight we are experiencing may last longer and Ladwa gets developed like other towns in the region,” Manbeer Virk, who belongs to Kheri Gadian village, said.
Saini, just like Ladwa, found himself in the spotlight when the BJP elevated the parliamentarian from Kurukshetra constituency as Haryana chief minister this March, replacing party veteran Manohar Lal Khattar weeks before the general elections.
To accommodate him in the Vidhan Sabha, the party fielded him as its candidate for the Karnal bypoll, which was held alongside the Lok Sabha elections. But his candidature from Ladwa during the state elections was rooted in simple logic – his proximity to the town, which falls under the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha constituency, during his time in Parliament.
“The respect I’m receiving from the people of Ladwa is impressive. I’ll always honour the paghri of Ladwa and work for the welfare of people,” Saini said at a recent poll event.
A leader from the OBC Saini community, which makes up about 7.5% of Ladwa’s population, the BJP hopes the chief minister’s sway within his caste can fend off the challenge from the Congress’s sitting legislator Mewa Singh and the Indian National Lok Dal’s Sapna Barshami, both Jat faces.
Also in the fray are the Jannayak Janata Party’s (JJP) Vinod Sharma, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Joga Singh, as well as Independent candidate Sandeep Garg, an industrialist and a BJP rebel who hopes to eat into his former party’s votes.
Saini’s campaign in the constituency has been helmed by his wife, Suman, with the chief minister crisscrossing the state, said party officials aware of the matter.
But that has done little to harsh the buzz around his candidature. During a packed day on the campaign trail, Suman receives a warm welcome when she visits the residence of a retired Sanksrit teacher in Vikas Nagar colony for tea.
“We are only focused on taking forward the development work our government has done. Ask anyone here, our government has worked for every section of society, whether farmers, young people, poor or women,” said Suman.
A raft of burning issues will shape the eventual outcome in the seat, with votes set to be influenced by the farmers’ protest, unemployment, traffic and a long-pending bypass road.
Several voters HT spoke to underscored the urgency of building key roads, within the town as well as highways, to improve connectivity.
Jai Bhagwan, an autorickshaw driver, says, “If a Ladwa bypass road is built, it will help ease traffic jams”.
But the BJP faces an uphill battle in a constituency it lost in the 2019 elections. The Congress’s Mewa Singh won the seat by 12,637 votes against the BJP’s Pawan Saini.
Singh, for his party, is busy covering as much of the constituency ahead of the October 5 elections.
At the Sikh-dominated Bodhi village, he accused Saini of being an absentee MP.
“I took up several matters in the assembly and brought about development work worth crores for Ladwa…. I know, the widening of the highway and getting a by-pass built are big issues. I’ve taken up both of them in the assembly. As an MP, Nayab Saini never met any person here. Never visited any village in Ladwa,” Singh told HT as he headed towards Kheri Gadian village for a meeting.
