I have come across many people in the constituency, mostly from the upper castes but some from the OBC community too, who claimed that while they were staunch supporters of the BJP at the state and national level, they voted for Raja Bhaiya and wished for an alliance between him and the BJP rather than SP. People in Kunda, indeed, often assert, “ W oh hinduon ke hit mein kaam karte hain’ (He works in the interest of Hindu).

Raja Bhaiya’s silence on such occasions has been seen by the sizeable Muslim population of Kunda as tacit support for his father’s communal actions, which results in electoral benefits for the former.Īt a recent lecture, Raja Bhaiya iterated his stand on the idea of a Hindutva nation, saying, “ Bharat aur Hindutva ek doosre ke paryaya hain (India and Hindutva are synonymous)”. Raja Bhaiya, his father and other associates have often had to be put under house arrest to prevent violence. In 2013, Raja Bhaiya faced charges of being involved in the sensational killing of circle officer, DSP Zia-ul-Haq, who was investigating the Asthan violence.įor several years, now on the day of Muharram festivities, Raja Bhaiya’s father and well-known Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) member, Uday Pratap Singh, calls for the organisation of a bhandārā at a Hanuman temple, flaring to communal tensions. In 2012, when Raja Bhaiya was part of the SP government in the state, 46 houses belonging to the Ansari community were burnt down in Asthan village over the alleged gangrape of a Dalit girl.

The making of a precarious Hindutva constituencyĭuring Raja Bhaiya’s tenure, Kunda has witnessed communal flare ups from time to time. The SP has fielded local strongman Gulshan Yadav, with proven influence in municipal elections over the last decade.Īlso read: UP Polls: In Loni, BJP MLA Gurjar Calls for ‘Hindu Unity’, Ramps Up Communal Rhetoric After voting for the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha election in 2018, the Kunda MLA fell into disfavour with Akhilesh Yadav, bringing to a close their almost three-decade association which saw Raja Bhaiya occupying cabinet berths under the Samajwadi Party (SP) government and the withdrawal of serious criminal charges against him. This time though, as Kunda goes to polls on February 27, Raja Bhaiya faces a formidable challenge. When the BJP swept the last assembly polls in 2017, Raja Bhaiya trounced his nearest rival from the saffron party by more than one lakh votes. ’ This incident, which is seen as marking the beginning of the ‘criminal’ antecedents of Raja Bhaiya’s politics, also highlights a less pronounced feature the communalisation of politics in Kunda.įrom 1993 onwards, Kunwar Raghuraj Pratap Singh (or Raja Bhaiya as he is popularly known) has won every single election to the Kunda assembly constituency as an independent candidate. The ‘Dilerganj massacre’ of 1995, as the incident came to be known, was one of the first sensational incidents associated with the local MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh, who went on to evoke epithets like ‘Kunda ka Gunda,’ ‘Robin Hood’. The girls in the age group of 8-8, 14-14, 16-16 years were stripped, 31 houses of Muslims were torched in Pratapgarh.This is the first example in the world …she was cremated in Allahabad instead of Pratapgarh or Dilerganj and no enquiry has been conducted in this regard (sic),” Yadav had said.ĭilerganj is a village in the town of Kunda in UP’s Pratapgarh district. “We have never heard of an incident like Dilerganj in history. At that time, Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati was the chief minister with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In 1997, Member of Parliament Mulayam Singh Yadav drew attention to rising incidents of communal violence against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh.

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