LUCKNOW: Barely two months after he won the civic elections as an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate, Mohammad Akram is now a BJP man.
Akram, who won from Shahpur nagar panchayat chairman seat in Muzaffarnagar, has announced his support for BJP MP and Union minister Sanjiv Balyan in the run-up to 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“Mantri ji (Balyan) is like our family member,” said Akram, a 46-year-old cloth trader in the locality.
Balyan, a two-time MP, has been the accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots that saw Muslims getting into abrasive terms with Jats and Dalits.
In fact, it was only in March that Balyan appeared in a special MP/MLA court in connection with a case of violating prohibitory orders and inciting communal tensions during the Muzaffarnagar riots.
Dubbing AAP as a party “without any base”, Akram said that he won the seat on his own strength and with the support of the people in the locality.
He had defeated BJP’s Karm Singh by a margin of 1,650 votes while cornering more than 38.5% of the total votes polled.
Notably, AAP won four more Nagar Panchayat chairman seats – Zoya (Amroha), Pakbada (Moradabad), Camry (Rampur) and Barsana (Mathura).
Interestingly, except for Barsana, the other four NP seats were won by Muslims.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led party also won three Nagar Palika Parishad chairman seats – Siyohara (Bijnor), Rampur (Rampur) and Khair (Aligarh).
None of the other AAP representatives have shown any indication of deserting the party until now.
Akram categorically junked the narrative that Muslims do not vote for the BJP.
"Muslim kaum BJP ko bhi vote karti hai," he asserted.
Asked why he did not seek a ticket from the BJP, Akram said that he did "whatever was possible".
In 2017 civic elections, the Shahpur nagar panchayat chairman seat was won by BJP’s Parmesh Saini.
Shahpur nagar panchayat falls under Budhana assembly segment of the Muzaffarnagar parliamentary seat.
Interestingly, it was in Budhana where Balyan trailed behind RLD chief Ajit Singh by the largest margin of 16,645 votes in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The other assembly segment where Balyan fell behind Singh was Charthawal (16430 votes).
Balyan was ahead of Singh in the other three segments – Muzaffarnagar, Khatauli and Sardhana – his overall winning margin was barely 6500 votes.
Experts said that the Balyan finds himself staring at a potential electoral challenge from the opposition amid perceptible resurrection of Samajwadi Party’s ally RLD in the west UP region in the run up to next year national general elections.
Analysts that the BJP has been consistently seeking to work at the grass roots to counter the stealthy consolidation of Muslims vote bank behind SP-RLD combine.