As every village in Gujarat’s Chhota Udepur district is buzzing with the pre-election festivities, Sajanpur, an adjacent village, has been showing no signs of any such excitement.
While one may equate this lack of zeal with the village’s disinterest in politics, it is the geographical positioning that bars Sajanpur from indulging in the Gujarat poll fever despite its close proximity to the state.
Sajanpur, though surrounded by the villages of Gujarat’s Chhota Udepur district from eight sides, falls within Madhya Pradesh’s Alirajpur district.
"Sajanpur is a unique village that is geographically surrounded by Gujarat but administratively it is under MP. So, the politicians from Gujarat rarely visit our village, not even during the elections,” former sarpanch of the village told The Times of India.
Located 3 km off the Madhya Pradesh border, the 1,200 residents of the village have no complaints with the MP administration and believe that despite their absurd geography, the MP government has never treated them any differently. They use Hindi as the official language of communication for all the admin related work, and sometimes converse in Gujarati in personal forums.
Despite the fact that the village is not experiencing any poll buzz, several residents are travelling to the neighbouring villages in Gujarat to be a spectator to the poll drama.
Moreover, whenever MP goes into elections, Sajanpur is the only such village that sees campaigning in Gujarat, according to Vikram Rathwa, a village farmer to the publication.
Sajanpur is not the only such state left unruffled by Gujarat politics despite its proximity to the state, Dadra, a village located between the Dungra and Lavachha villages of Gujarat owes its political allegiance to the Dadra and Nagar Haveli Union territory.