No fresh incidents of communal violence were reported on Friday, even as Haryana slowly recovers from the violence that broke out in Nuh earlier this week. This district, adjacent to Haryana’s borders with Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan has its own history and its own place in the politics of the state.
After the riots, this matter has also taken political colour at both the national and state level. There is fierce rhetoric between the ruling BJP and the Opposition parties regarding the matter. Meanwhile, it is also worth stating that the riots are most likely to have far-reaching political implications for the forthcoming elections. Political experts believe that after the violence in Nuh, new developments will surface in political spheres leading to a possible polarisation of votes.
Politically, Nuh has been the bastion of Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). So far, no BJP candidate has managed to win a single seat in Nuh, including the party’s previous Assembly candidate, Zakir Hussain. Apart from this, the party had given a ticket to another Muslim candidate Naseem Ahmed from the Ferozepur-Jhirka seat but the election proved to be a political nightmare for him. However, the BJP’s vote share has seen a definite increase. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the party had an estimated 5 percent votes, which increased to 14 percent in 2019. Notably, Nuh district has a total of three Assembly seats including Nuh, Punhana and Ferozpur-Jhirka—all of which are Muslim-dominated.
Two more Assembly seats, Sohna and Hathin are adjacent to Nuh, where Muslim voters have previously played kingmakers. Sohna seat is also dominated by the Muslim community and BJP contestant Sanjay Singh succeeded in winning the election here in 2019. The situation is more or less similar in Hathin as well, where BJP’s Praveen Dagar won the elections in 2019.
In the 2019 assembly elections, Congress candidates won all three seats. Aftab Ahmed defeated BJP’s Hussain by a margin of 4038 votes in Nuh and Maman Khan won the Ferozepur-Jhirka seat, defeating Ahmed by a margin of 37,004 votes. Mohammad Ilyas of the Congress won the Punhana seat after a close battle with independent Rahish Khan, who he defeated by a margin of 816 votes. In 2014, INLD won two seats while an independent won one seat.
According to the 2011 census, the Muslim constituent population in Haryana is 7.2 percent and a large portion lives in Palwal (20%), Faridabad (8.93%), Gurugram (4.68%) and Rewari (0.63%). According to statistics, about 80 percent of the population in Nuh is Muslim.