Kanke, Dec. 6: Kanke, an Assembly seat with startling contrasts - professional colleges, malls, mental health hubs, posh high-rises, slums and fertile farmlands - has a two-time sitting BJP MLA whose claim to fame seems to rest on uniformly disappointing every pocket of his varied constituency in the last decade.

Despite the NaMo wave, anti-incumbency sentiments against BJP's Ram Chandra Baitha, who won in 2005 and 2009, were so furious that the party buckled and gave its ticket to new face, RSS pracharak Jitu Charan Ram.

Now, Ram is locking horns with fellow debutante of the JMM, Ashok Kumar Nag, a professor-turned-politician, Congressman Suresh Kumar Baitha and 11 other contestants.

But, in all fairness, manning the Assembly constituency, part of the Ranchi Lok Sabha seat, is no mean task.

Nagri, around 25 km from Ranchi, is a part of Kanke constituency. It hogged headlines some three years ago when it was proposed as the state's educational hub with three elite professional institutions - National University for Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

Land acquisition led to heated exchanges between the state and farmers. Controversially, the state claimed it acquired the land way back in the 1950s and the compensation had been deposited in the treasury, but present-day settlers stressed it was their farmland that couldn't be snatched.

Now, NUSRL is the only institute to come up on the proposed plot in Nagri. IIM-R has been shifted to village Cheri nearby, also part of Kanke Assembly constituency. IIIT, also moved to Cheri, is awaiting a seal of approval from Union HRD ministry.

So, while these institutions haven't moved out of Kanke Assembly seat, already chock-a-block with BAU, BIT-Mesra, CMPDI and so on, as well as the proposed permanent CUJ campus on Manatu - Nagri's loss is Cheri's gain.

Nagri residents are grappling with this change. The fight for land ended in an uneasy defeat. People were left to battle unrest, alleged zero compensation, numerous police cases, loss in agricultural produce, unemployment and poverty.

Forty-five year old Shanti Toppo, who protested against having to give up her plot, claimed she and her family were facing fabricated theft cases.

'Paddy harvest is good, but land has shrunk and so I am worried about feeding my family of seven,' she said while sitting on a small patch she claimed as her own.

'Don't know when the government will snatch this too and tell us that our ancestors have been paid for it or go get it from the treasury,' she said sarcastically, alleging local policemen accused them and other villagers of stealing bricks, grilles, sand and so on from the construction sites.

'We never opposed any education hub. Our demand was simple. Take any land except farmland. Give us due compensation. Was that too much? All of a sudden, government said our land doesn't belong to us. All of us had land records and we paid regular challans till the day they snatched our plots. We lost money, land, everything. Courts sided with the government's false propaganda,' Toppo alleged.

Rampyari Devi questions the state's dictum that universities would bring development. 'Where is the development? Where are schools or roads? Will our youths study in the universities without schools? Neither the local leader nor the government cares for us,' the elderly Nagri resident said.

Nineteen-year-old Sonu Toppo, who has an intermediate degree, claimed many youths had applied for Grade IV jobs at NUSRL. 'Our applications were rejected the moment they saw we were from Nagri,' he said. 'We are pariahs.'

Not just Nagri, Kanke as a whole is finding itself at the crossroads. The constituency's contours change every kilometre or two with a deepening gap of haves and have-nots.

The swanky Kanke-Patratu four-lane road is a case in point. On either sides, neglect and lack of governance are evident.

Unimaginable in posh Kanke Road or Morabadi areas of Kanke, Sukuhuttu, also in the same constituency, almost floats on drain water.

'Look,' resident Ranjan Kumar pointed towards a road inundated with sewage. 'It's a daily affair. We don't know if we live in a city or in a drain,' he added.

Pithoria, one of the state's vegetable bowls, is crying for electricity and water since years. Burku village nearby still doesn't have a road.

Haven't they demanded roads, water or electricity from their MLA?

' Paanch saal pehle dekha tha. Ab toh ticket nahin mila. Koi dusra ghum raha hai unke jagha. (Saw the MLA (Baitha) five years back. Now, he hasn't got the ticket, someone else (Ram) is campaigning in his place now),' Burku resident Vijay Toppo, stopping his cycle on the side of the four-lane, said.

The last word on Kanke - most famous for mental health hubs CIP and Rinpas - comes from Rinpas senior professor Amool Ranjan.

'In Kanke, the divide between the haves and have-nots is increasing by the day. It's a recipe for aggression. Extroverted aggression can mean physical rebellion (protests or rioting); introverted one can find expression in a suicidal tendency. Social imbalance is scary.'

Kanke votes on December 9