With there being few employment avenues in this border industrial belt of Paonta Sahib, illegal mining has emerged as an employment avenue for hundreds of jobless youth. Officials admit this fact and, according to an estimate, there are hundreds of families which thrive on this illegal trade along the Yamuna bridge in areas like Rampur Ghat and Devi Nagar. Though the area has traditionally been a Congress bastion, the BJP made inroads here in the last parliamentary polls by attaining a lead of more than 8,000 votes. In this belt, a group of youth are enthusiastic about voting for the “Janta” and though they cannot decipher which party it means, on being questioned further, they say their choice is Modi though their family members are traditionally Congress voters, opines Jeet Singh, who works as a driver. While insecurity marks the bordering villages dotting the Uttarakhand border where frequent cases of looting and other heinous crimes have been surfacing from time to time, the presence of a police post at Singhpura and lack of security are their key concerns, explains Daljeet Kumar, a young voter from a village nearby. The constituency has a large number of Sikh voters who have ambivalent views about the Lok Sabha polls. The presence of Manmohan Singh at the helm has always goaded them to vote for the Congress. Their sentiments are, however, different this time with the entry of the Prime Minister’s brother into the BJP. Even the local issue of inept handling of the revered Hola Mohalla fair at Paonta Sahib has left a bitter taste in people's mouth. “Being traditionally Congress voters, people here have the reputation of voting for the Congress even if they have remained critical of its policies,” opines Jagat Ram, an elderly villager, adding that people have a lot of respect for Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. People in the Aanj Bhoj area, comprising 13 panchayats, have their own tale of woes as despite petitioning their cause repeatedly with various politicians about declaring the trans-Giri region as a tribal area, little has been done, opines Kamlesh Devi. Residents of other panchayats like Poka, Kotja, Kotga and Nageta, which are bereft of proper roads, rue the Public Works Department has erected several boards stating that repair of roads is underway and this has become a permanent feature. Both the BJP and the Congress are banking on attaining a lead from this area and though no senior Central leader has campaigned here till now, both parties consider it their secure bastion.