Pilibhit, May 09: Sardar Jungli Singh seethes with fury when Maneka Gandhi talks fondly about wild animals. He has reasons to be angry. The 45-year-old farmer escaped by a whisker an attack by a tigress in his own courtyard. “It was a hot, moonless night. Me and my wife were sleeping in the courtyard. A goat was under the shade, a few yards from where we were asleep. Anger and fear alternate among villagers who live along the deep forest areas of Pilibhit. Mostly Dalits, unlike the Sardar, they are fighting a losing battle against animal attacks. Stories of how a cyclist, Banta Singh, was dragged into the forest by a tiger and how Deena Ram was killed by a tigress while working in the fields form part of the local village lore. Phool Babu, alias Anish Ahmed Khan, who is also the Bahujan Samaj Party MLA from Pilibhit’s Bisalpur Assembly segment, is playing up this man-animal conflict that has claimed over 1,000 Dalits and villagers in the last 10 years. Pilibhit constituency, which is part of the sugar-rich Terai region in western Uttar Pradesh, has a reserve forest with a sizeable population of leopards, tigers and bears. “To Maneka, leopards, tigers and dogs come first in priority and then comes nature. After that women and if she hasn’t lost her cool, men,” says Phool Babu. Maneka’s campaign managers say wild animals are straying into human habitations because of erosion of their “prey base”. “Who are killing the deer, jungle goats and forcing the wild animals to enter human areas?” asks Chandraprakash Singh, a member of the former environment minister’s campaign team. Singh also says that victims of animal attacks have got compensation from the government. “But not the Dalits obviously,” shoots back a local BSP supporter. “Yet the blame goes to the Dalits and tribals always.” The campaign theme of animal attacks and Dalit victims is not the only problem the “rebel bahu of the Gandhi family” is facing. Canvassing for the first time here after joining the BJP, Maneka has to contend with the challenge of her former confidant in Pilibhit. Virendra Mohan Singh, who was with her in the last three elections, is now a Congress candidate from this constituency. Congress sources here claim that Virendra Singh — so long known as Maneka’s “yes man” — could pose a threat as he knows her shortcomings. But Virendra Singh was not just Maneka’s shadow. He ran the Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, an outfit of farmers, and because of his proximity to Mahendra Singh Tikait, the firebrand farmer leader of the Jat belt, is known in Pilibhit as the “Tikait of Terai”. “We hoped she would take up some of the local issues with the central government. Issues like support price for sugarcane farmers. But Maneka did nothing,” Virendra Singh says, explaining the reasons for his decision. But sources say he was upset that she joined the BJP. Maneka, however, does not seem worried over the loss of Muslim votes because of her decision to join the BJP. Muslims account for about 25 per cent of the population of Pilibhit constituency, which is part of the erstwhile Muslim Rohilla kingdom, and Maneka got a lion’s share of their votes when she contested as an Independent in the last three elections.