Ex-top cop takes on former boss in Baghpat

Baghpat has been a family pocket borough of Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh and his father — the legendary peasant leader and former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh — who have won every election here since 1977, except one.

That one time was in 1998 when the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Sompal Shastri pulled off an upset.

The man seeking to do a Sompal for the BJP this time is someone who was Ajit Singh’s private secretary while he was the Union Industry Minister in the National Front Government in 1990.

Satyapal Singh is more famous though for having been Mumbai’s Police Commissioner — a post he resigned only two months ago to join the BJP to take on his former boss and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief.

“I had one-and-a-half years of service left, but decided to contest after being approached by the party’s top leadership,” said Singh, who even got Bollywood star Sunny Deol to do a road-show for him.

The ex-Indian Police Service officer hails from Basoli in Baghpat’s Baraut tehsil.

“I studied in the village school, did BSc from the Jat (now Janta Vedic) College and MSc from the Digambar Jain College in Baraut. I am very much a local,” he emphasised.

Satyapal Singh, like his entrenched opponent, is a Jat in a constituency where the community forms an estimated four lakh out of the 15-lakh electorate.

Ajit Singh himself wasn’t in a very comfortable position till only two months ago. “There were quite a few here, especially youngsters, who wanted to vote Narendra Modi this time,” informed Inderpal Singh Tomar, a farmer of Fatehpur Puthi in Baghpat tehsil who owns five acres.

But the UPA Government’s decision early this month classifying Jats under Other Backward Classes has changed things. “90 per cent or more have now returned to the RLD,” he stated. Satyapal Singh, however, dismissed the impact of Jat reservations in Central Government jobs and educational institutions.

“Reservations have little meaning today when 98 per cent jobs are in the private sector,” he pointed out. The real issue, according to him, was development, in which Baghpat was “1,000 km away from Delhi,” despite being only 30 km by road.

“No good government hospital, school or college has come up in the last 30 years. And look at the roads, with work on the Delhi-Saharanpur-Yamunotri highway upgrade project practically stuck. Who is responsible?” he quipped.

Satyapal Singh also referred to the condition of sugarcane farmers. The Modi sugar mill at Malakpur has not made payments since last March.

“In Chhaprauli (an Assembly segment), 260 marriages have been cancelled because of no cane payments,” he claimed.

But the fight is not just between the two Jats. The potential spoiler is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Prashant Chaudhary, a Gujjar.

While Gujjars number only 75,000-80,000 in Baghpat, the BSP’s vote base is the 1.5 lakh-odd Dalits. In 2009, Ajit Singh defeated BSP’s Mukesh Sharma by just over 63,000 votes.

A key decider this time would be the three lakh-plus Muslim voters. They are being wooed not just by the RLD and BSP, but even the Samajwadi Party which has fielded its Muslim MLA from Siwalkhas, Haji Ghulam Mohammad.

“It is a tough choice for Muslims whether to vote their own community man or the candidate best placed to beat BJP,” admitted Chaudhary Iftekhar Hassan, a lawyer and former gram pradhan of Osika — a village in Baraut tehsil dominated by ‘Muleys’ or Jat Muslims.

“We (Muleys) may go with RLD since the reservation benefits extend to us also. But we are only 10 per cent of all Muslims. The remaining 90 per cent vote is still open,” he added.

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