Though Verma, whom villagers respectfully refer to as “Babuji”, has developed Sirauli as a “model village”, they were apparently not in unison to blindly back the Congress candidate Thakur Ramvir Singh in Ram Nagar assembly constituency.

Sirauli, which earlier used to be a part of Dariabad constituency from where Veram’s son Rakesh Verma is the Congress nominee, has 970 voters. About 450 had turned up at the booth by 1.10 pm on Wednesday.

An interesting feature of Sirauli is that its caste demography suits the requirement of the Congress’ new social engineering. It consists of Kurmis among the OBC, Dhobis and Lonia among the MBCs, Muslims, and Pasi among the dalits.

But there is one issue — the Kurmis and Yadavs are almost in equal numbers. The third in population size are Muslims, said Manoj, a youth who had come to cast his vote at the local primary school booth.

This caste composition has always suited the political interest of Beni Verma as long as he was in parties other than the Congress in more than his four decade long political career.

“Though Beni Babu had left the Samajwadi Party before the 2007 assembly elections, the villagers voted for his Samajwadi Kranti Dal, rising above the caste lines”, Ravi said.

Now, with Verma in Congress, which is opposing the Samajwadi Party, the situation is different. “Yadav and Kurmis are on two different platforms in this village,” a villager said on conditions of anonymity.

According to him, it was not that all Yadavs were with the SP. “Some of them have good relations with Beni babu, and thus they have gone with the Congress candidate in this election,” he said, but added that had the Congress candidate been someone from Verma’s family, the villagers would have backed him or her.

More than four decades ago, it was Verma who had taught the politics of “anti-Congressism” to his villagers. “He had won his first election in 1974. His friendship with Mulayam has always suited his politics in the area. This is certainly a new situation for him,” said an old man, who runs his tea stall just at the entry point of Sirauli.

The total lack of enthusiasm among villagers to the Congress apparently defies his contribution to develop his village. After becoming a minister in the Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government in 1995, Verma first ensured the status of block to this village, after which he got Sirauli upgraded to the status of sub-division.

It is a rare village where the state government has built a PWD guest house. It also has a 100-bed government hospital. Later, during his tenure as the union communication minister, Verma had got a telephone exchange in the village. There also a fire station, a park and a power sub-station.