Congress Wins Una, the Epicentre of the 2016 Dalit Protests
The Una incident in 2016 triggered massive statewide protests against cow vigilantes.
On 11 July 2016, members of a cow vigilante group flogged four Dalit men in Gujarat’s Una, accusing them of cow slaughter. The men, who were leather tanners from the town, were only skinning dead cows.
The incident triggered massive statewide protests against cow vigilantes, putting the town on the national map.
Congress candidate Vansh Punjabhai Bhimabhai won the controversial Assembly seat of Una, located in the Saurashtra region of the state. There are 2,33,303 voters on the electoral rolls in the constituency.
Bhimabhai polled 48.56 percent of votes – or 75,755 votes. He won against Bharatiya Janata Party’s Haribhai Boghabhai Solanki by 4,928 votes, who polled 45.27 percent of votes.
Congress had also won the seat in the 2012 Assembly elections.
The incident in Una also saw the rise of Jignesh Mevani, with him forming the Una Dalit Fight Against Atrocities Committee to fight crimes against Dalits. Mevani has, incidentally, won a seat from the Vadgam constituency, located in the Northern region of the state.
A 10-day #ChaloUna march, called 'Azadi Kooch,’ was organised from Ahmedabad to Una in August 2016, following the flogging incident. This was initiated in a bid to mobilise the Dalit community.
Radhika Vemula, the mother of University of Hyderabad student Rohith Vemula who killed himself in the varsity, and former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar attended the protest march.
Several members of the Dalit community also resorted to leaving cow carcasses outside government offices in Gujarat to protest against the incident.
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