Voters disillusioned with Mayawati in Dadri

DADRI: The Dadri assembly seat, which is Mayawati's home constituency, is primarily a rural area that is developing swiftly and emerging as a new industrial and institutional hub in Uttar Pradesh.
Dadri is a Gujjar-dominated constituency where caste and religion have always played decisive roles in the outcome of polls. Most of the candidates in the fray for the Lok Sabha election are busy making electoral strategies that would combine the political leanings of caste combinations in different villages with the politics of development to woo the rapidly developing assembly seat in the district.
With a total population of over six lakh, Dadri lacks basic facilities such as primary education, connectivity, electricity while there is also concern over an increasing crime rate. Besides this, rehabilitation and inadequate compensation for families hit by land acquisition are major issues here. Dadri, which comprises the Noida Extension area, had earlier witnessed a farmers' agitation which had halted the construction of over two lakh flats.
In the last assembly election, the sitting BSP MLA, Satveer Gujjar, defeated BJP's Nawab Singh Nagar by a margin of 37,297 votes. Satveer got 81,137 votes while Nawab managed only 43,840 votes. However, according to locals a large section of the Dalit community has become disillusioned with former chief minister Mayawati and her ostentatious display of wealth. The construction of a magnificent estate in her ancestral village for her personal use has alienated her from many of her most vehement supporters.
Locals said the Yadav community, which makes up a large part of the Samajwadi Party's (SP) core electorate, is largely absent in the area but ire aimed at the BSP might end up helping the party's chances in the area.
The ambitious power plant in Dadri, which was meant to solve the electricity problems in western UP, has become an issue since the project was supposed to create employment opportunities for the masses here. However, for the local people, development and employment are major issues as a number of ambitious and large-scale projects have been stalled for a variety of reasons.