Caste and religious polarisation, coupled with losing connect on ground, seemingly led to the loss of sugarcane minister Suresh Rana in Uttar Pradesh elections.
Rana lost to Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Ashraf Ali in Thana Bhawan by a margin of approximately 10,000 votes.
Sources said that consolidation of Jat, Brahmins and Muslim voters caused the fall of Rana.
“There are a significant number of Muslims in his constituency. Also, Jats in his constituency decided to vote for Jayant Chaudhary. Brahmins were upset with him due to his Thakurwad in panchayat polls,” said a senior party leader.
Another apparent cause of the debacle was non-payment of dues to sugarcane farmers. Payments of sugarcane dues used to be one of the major poll issues. There were few who claimed that dues were not cleared and sugarcane mills have exploited the farmers.
During his interview to News18.com, Rana, while taking potshots at Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, had said, “Woh Jinnah wale hai, hum ganna wale hain (they talk of Jinnah and we talk of sugarcane).”
“There is anti-incumbency against him due to his arrogance as well,” a senior party leader had said. While speaking to News18.com during election campaigning, Rana had rubbished all such claims. He had stated that his ministry had cleared three time the dues in five years than done by the SP-BSP government and a payment of Rs 1.5 lakh crore towards sugarcane dues was cleared, along with marginally increasing the rates.
Once named in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots cases, Rana emerged as the party’s Hindu poster boy in the region.
However, Rana is not the only minister in Yogi’s cabinet who lost elections. One of the biggest loss is of party’s OBC face and deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya to SP’s Pallavi Patel of Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) in Sirathu. Rural development minister Rajendra Pratap Singh, basic education minister Satish Dwivedi, cabinet minister and BJP turncoat Swami Prasad Maurya, along with other ministers of state namely Upendra Tiwari, Ranvendra Pratap Singh, Girish Chandra Yadav, Anand Swaroop Shukla, Chandrika Prasad Upadhyay and Chhatrapal Gangwar, too, lost the elections.
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