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The people of Haryana’s Mewat district, considered one of the most backward regions in north India in terms of social indicators, are busy with last-minute calculations for the voting on Thursday. Akhtar, a young boy sitting in a nondescript tea shop in Singar village here, about 100 km from Delhi, was discreet on who he would vote for. “All of us in the area will decide on whom to vote for,” he said.
Near the main bazaar in Punhana, a group debated on how votes might be split between the Indian National Lok Dal’s Zakir Hussain, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Rao Inderjeet Singh (till recently a Congress member) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Yogendra Yadav.
Few spoke about the Congress’s Rao Dharampal.
On Tuesday, the last day of campaigning here, psephologist-turned-politician Yogendra Yadav, 50, claimed his party was in the lead in the run-up to elections in this constituency. Betting big on Mewat, comprising 450,000 voters, Yadav ended his campaign here, the place where he had begun seeking votes a few months ago. At every stop in the narrow village lanes, he reiterated his relationship with Mewat was old and beyond poll boundaries. He has been working on social issues in this region for about 10 years and is, therefore, a known face.
His nephew, Vivek Yadav, a PhD student at Columbia University, helped him organise the campaign. Election experience is believed to be part of Vivek’s curriculum.
Hopping from a Tata Safari to an open Gypsy every now and again in a cavalcade that often jammed the dusty roads, Yadav found time to quickly eat a frugal lunch, before catching up with his supporters again.
As a psephologist, who does he think will win? “It will be silly of me to pretend to speak as a psephologist now. I speak as a candidate who knows a lot more and a lot less than a psephologist,” Yadav told Business Standard. “I think when we started here, we were number three. Now, we are in the clear lead.” As an afterthought, he added, “You would expect every candidate to say that.”
On his biggest challenger, Yadav, who now has to raise his voice to drown out the crowd and the traffic noise, says, “It is a direct contest between the AAP and the BJP. Everybody else is irrelevant.”
What about a Narendra Modi wave in this constituency? “I have been here for at least six weeks and there’s no sign of a Modi wave,” he insists.
Soon, he asks people in Punhana village, “Do you want Narendra Modi as the country’s prime minister?” His followers scream “no”.
Dressed in a Pathan suit, a style he chose to adopt several years ago (his party men clarified this had nothing to do with the large number of Muslim voters in this constituency), Yadav urged the villagers to give him a chance. “Have faith in me. I don’t know what kind of people you have put your faith in so far…I have been coming to you for very long.” He says if Mewat has to see a change, the politics here has to be transformed. Hitting out at the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government in Haryana, he says, “If I come to power, your MP will come to you to find out about your problems.”
Not leaving anything to chance, Yadav, now followed by Election Commission officials, as the campaign was drawing to a close, started to walk to areas inaccessible to vehicles. To a semi-literate group, he said it should vote for the eighth name on the ballot paper.
A visit to the sarpanch of the village marked the end of his campaign.
On Wednesday, Yadav was busy briefing poll booth agents and coordinators in his Sushant Lok office, in glitzy Gurgaon, a part of the constituency far removed from Mewat in terms of prosperity and development. Though his party men met small groups informally, Yadav, who hardly utters anything out of place, is believed to have stayed away from any campaign the day before the polls.
Yadav doesn’t plan to seek divine blessings. “Neither is he religious, nor does he believe in symbolism,” claimed a party worker. Once elections here are over, he will campaign in other regions, including Varanasi, where his party chief, Arvind Kejriwal, is contesting against Narendra Modi.
