The tug of war for the Kairana Lok Sabha seat, once in news for exodus of Hindus, is between the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal on one side and Samajwadi Party and Congress on the other.

Despite being a Muslim dominated constituency, the BJP had wrested the Kairana Lok Sabha seat from the RLD in the 2019 parliamentary election when Jayant Chaudhary had contested the poll in alliance with the SP. The million dollar question is will the SP-Congress be able to check the BJP’s victory march in Kairana this time?

Kairana is adjacent to Panipat and in the west of Muzaffarnagar. The politically sensitive Kairana went the BJP way for the first time in 2014 after its leader Hukum Singh raised the issue of exodus of Hindus, drawing a wave in favour of the saffron party. The BJP highlighted the exodus of Hindus from Kairana, pointing to the houses lying locked then.

The issue first gained attention when Hukum Singh expressed concern over the exodus of Hindus from Kairana, allegedly due to intimidation by Muslims. In the run-up to the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the BJP made the Kairana exodus a focal point of its campaign.

The Congress, which ruled Uttar Pradesh for years, could not retain this parliamentary seat for a long time. The Congress is yet to taste victory in Kairana in the last 40 years. Congress last won from Kairana in 1984 when its candidate Akhtar Hasan emerged victorious.

Even as the BJP has carved a niche for itself by raising the issue of migration of Hindus those days, no party can say with certainty that Kairana is their political turf.

The BJP has occupied the seat since 2014. But the party faced defeat in the 2018 by-election.

This time the BJP has fielded Pradeep Kumar Chaudhary from the Kairana Lok Sabha seat while the SP, a partner of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), has given its ticket to Iqra Hasan.

The Kairana Lok Sabha constituency in Shamli district has five assembly segments – two in Saharanpur district and three in Shamli district. In the 2022 UP assembly polls which were held three years after the 2019 general elections, the BJP had bagged the Nakur and Gangoh seats, while Kairana assembly seat went to SP. The remaining two seats – Thana Bhawan and Shamli – were won by the RLD.

Even though the RLD is an ally of the BJP this time, the fight for the Kairana Lok Sabha seat is going to be tough. While the BJP is trying to continue its winning streak on this seat, Congress, SP and Bahujan Samaj Party are offering a tough challenge. To stop the BJP from winning this seat for the third time in a row, the INDIA bloc is banking on caste and religion equation.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, 13 candidates were in the fray in Kairana but the main contest was between the BJP and the SP. BJP’s Pradeep Kumar secured 5,66,961 votes to win the election, while SP’s Tabassum Begum polled 4,74,801 votes. Harendra Singh Malik of the Congress was in third place. Pradeep Kumar won this Muslim dominated seat by a margin of 92,160 (8.2 per cent) votes. In this election, there was an alliance between the SP and the BSP and the SP had fielded its candidate from this seat.

A year back in 2018, in the by-election for the seat after the death of Lok Sabha MP Hukum Singh, his daughter Mriganka Singh was fielded by the BJP while Tabassum Hasan was the candidate of RLD which contested the poll in alliance with the SP. Tabassum Hasan won the by-election but a year later she faced defeat in Kairana constituency.

In the nine elections held since 1991 for the Kairana Lok Sabha seat, the BJP has won three times and Rashtriya Lok Dal has also won three times. Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party have won the seat once each.

Since 1991 to this date, Tabassum Hasan is the only leader who has won twice from Kairana seat. Tabassum won the election on the BSP ticket in the 2009 elections, while in 2018 she won the election on the RLD ticket. Her husband Munavvar Hasan has also won the Lok Sabha election from Kairana in 1996. In the last nine elections in Kairana since 1991, Muslim candidates have won four times. In the first Lok Sabha election, Jat leader Yashpal Singh won as an independent candidate.