The electoral battle in Ladwa constituency heats up as BJP’s Nayab Singh Saini and Congress’s Mewa Singh vie for crucial Jat and Saini votes.
Ladwa: As election fever sweeps across Haryana, the previously lesser-known Ladwa constituency in Kurukshetra district has now emerged as a hotspot for a fiercely contested, caste-driven political battle between the Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini of the BJP, and the incumbent Congress MLA, Mewa Singh.
The stakes are high in Ladwa, where the Jat and Saini communities, each with a voting strength of around 40,000 are at the heart of this intense electoral battle. In this closely contested race, both key contenders—Nayab Singh Saini and Mewa Singh—are heavily relying on the support of their respective communities to secure victory.
Contesting his fifth election from his fourth constituency, Saini is now running from Ladwa, considered the “safest” seat among the three Saini-dominated constituencies after Radaur and Naraingarh. This decision follows BJP’s internal report, which highlighted Ladwa as a stronghold based on the party’s performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections, where it secured 47.14% of the votes in this segment.
With the Saini community forming 7.4% of the constituency’s population, Saini banks on his community and BJP’s rural outreach for a solid backing. Moreover, Ladwa was also part of the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha-the constituency represented by Nayab Saini in 2019. But this race was far from easy for the chief minister who had won the Karnal by-election comfortably by 41,450 votes.
In the past 11 months, Saini’s political career has soared since his appointment as president of the Haryana BJP in October last year, followed by his rise to become the 11th chief minister of Haryana, just five months later. However, as he now faces a fierce battle in the upcoming Assembly elections, much is at stake for him.
Having faced a humiliating defeat in the 2009 Assembly elections from Naraingarh as a BJP candidate, Saini registered his first electoral victory in 2014 from the same constituency, followed by the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Kurukshetra, and most recently, the Karnal by-election in May this year. Despite changing constituencies in all three elections, he has never tasted defeat.
Mewa Singh, the sitting Congress MLA who won by a margin of 12,637 votes in 2019, defeating Pawan Saini of the BJP, is now giving a tough fight to Saini in this multi cornered contest. However, he is facing anti-incumbency pressures as this rural constituency remained neglected. People here complain about the broken roads, traffic jams, poor infrastructure, and a long pending demand of construction of a bypass remains unfulfilled.
For Mewa Singh, the primary challenge comes from his own community as another Jat leader, Sapna Barshami, representing the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), is also in the fray. Sapna Barshami is the daughter- in-law of former Ladwa MLA and a close friend of former chief minister O.P. Chautala. Barshami was also convicted along with Chautala in a 2013 recruitment scam.
Since Barshami family enjoys support of Jats in this region, a division in the Jat votes between Singh and Barshami can jeopardise Mewa’s winnability as Sapna Barshami, contesting on the INLD ticket, got 15,513 votes in 2019. Even Sher Singh Barshami’s wife Bachan Kaur Barshami, who was the only strong Jat candidate in the fray in 2014 had got 39,453 votes.
While the Congress and INLD candidates vie for Jat support, which has traditionally dominated the political landscape of Ladwa, Saini’s campaign hinges on securing the non-Jat vote bank, particularly from the OBC and upper-caste communities like the Baniyas and Brahmins.
Moreover, the candidacy of Sandeep Garg, a former BJP leader running as an independent, poses a serious challenge to Saini. Garg, hailing from the influential Baniya community, has the potential to erode BJP’s vote base by drawing support from the Vaishya community, which constitutes around 2% of Ladwa’s electorate. However, local journalists and political observers suggest that Saini and Singh are locked in a fierce, neck-and-neck battle, and any split in the votebanks of either candidate could prove decisive in such a closely contested race.
Adding further intrigue, Ladwa’s political history has been unpredictable. Since its creation in 2007 following the delimitation exercise, no political party has won the Ladwa seat twice. It was first represented by INLD’s Sher Singh Barshami, who was later convicted in a recruitment scam. This handed an opportunity to BJP’s Pawan Saini, who took over in 2014, only to lose the seat to Mewa Singh in 2019.
The key to victory in Ladwa seems to rest on who can win over the undecided rural voters and navigate the complex caste equations. The constituencies demographic is predominantly rural, with Scheduled Castes comprising 22.6% of the population, making their support crucial. While Saini has the advantage of being the chief ministerial face of the BJP, Singh focuses his campaign on local issues like unemployment, high inflation, and promises of better infrastructure, such as a new bypass and a girls’ college.
Moreover, Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Joga Singh and Jannayak Janta Party’s Vinod Sharma are in the fray, further complicating the race. However, the main challenge remains between Congress and BJP, and other contenders may potentially play the spoiler.
As the campaign intensifies, political rallies have drawn heavyweights from both sides. BJP has dispatched top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi who conducted a rally in Kurukshetra and even Union Home Minister Amit Shah also addressed a rally in Ladwa for Saini. In the absence of central leadership of the Congress, Singh highly depends upon Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his son Deepender Hooda, besides the local leader. But since Singh was actively campaigning in each and every village, Saini had very limited time to devote to his constituency as he was busy in leading the party’s campaign across the 90 constituencies of the state, and in his absence, his wife Suman Saini led the campaign.
“With the possibility of divided votes and shifting allegiances, the Ladwa seat, once considered a safe bet for Nayab Singh Saini, now promises to be one of the most fiercely fought constituencies in Haryana”, says a political observer.