AGRA: With influential Jat community in

Mathura

showing signs of alienation, sitting MP

is all set to flaunt her credential as a Jat bahu. For this, she has elaborate plans to rope in her husband, “jat, yamla, pagla, deewana” Dharmendra, to woo the community voters. Sources close to her said that the 83-year-old actor would be arriving in Mathura after April 7 to campaign for her.

Dharmendra, who kept away from campaigning for Hema during the 2014

elections when a strong Modi wave was sweeping the nation, would be by his wife’s side this time, to turn the tide in her favour. With five years of anti-incumbency and a resentment among the Jat community against the BJP, it might not be a smooth sail for Hema in this election. There are 4.5 lakh Jat voters in Mathura. When contacted, Hema, remained non committal to TOI on the extent of involvement of her husband in the campaign but confirmed that he would certainly join her.

While Hema’s supporters believed that Dharmendra can give the much-needed boost to her campaign, local residents claim that the couple’s star appeal may not be enough to ensure a second term for her. Hema Malini carries an image of a clean politician and has not courted any major controversy during her five years in Lok Sabha. However, she has been accused of not doing much for the constituency and remaining absent because of her professional commitments. “If she has chosen politics then she should have shown some dedication to it. Rather than the constituency and its people, her priority remained her professional commitments as an actor,” said Mukesh Chaudhary, a Mathura resident.

Chaudhary, who belongs to the Jat community, said that people had chosen Hema in 2014 over then sitting MP Jayant Chaudhary, who belongs to a very reputed Jat family, because of her emotional appeal of being a “Jat Bahu”. “Besides the Modi charisma, her Dharmendra connection also worked in her favour in 2014. God knows if the same appeal will work this time too,” he said.

“Neither the Modi government nor the local MP has done anything for the people,” said Pritam Singh, another Jat who lives in Govardhan. “Dharmendra would certainly be a crowd-puller but how many of those translate into votes remains to be seen,” he said.

Local residents blame her for not doing much for Rawal village in Mathura, which she adopted under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana scheme in 2014. Residents said that the condition of the village roads was pathetic and an RO plant installed by Hema is not working any more.

However, Hema Malini says that she has done a lot of work for the constituency and remained available for the people. Last year, she bought a house in Mathura and says that she would be spending more time here now. Recently, UP CM Yogi Adityanath also said in a public rally that she visited her constituency over 250 times just to play down accusations against her that she was unavailable to the people of Mathura.

Hema has been active in politics since 1999 when she campaigned for the party for the first time. She formally joined BJP in 2004. Before becoming MP in 2014, she was in Rajya Sabha. In 2014, she defeated Jayant Chaudhary, grandson of former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh by over 3 lakh votes. This time, she is pitted in a three-cornered fight against RLD’s Kunwar Narendra Singh and Congress’s Mahesh Pathak, a Brahmin face fielded to divide BJP’s upper caste votes.