LUCKNOW: The Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded nearly 30% Muslim candidates in the Lok Sabha election in UP, till now. The party has declared candidates for 72 LS seats and there are eight more seats for which the party will declare candidates soon. Out of 72, 20 candidates fielded by BSP come from the Muslim community.
With eight LS seats still left where the party has to declare candidates, the number of Muslim candidates may go further north.
This is in sharp contrast to BSP’s picks for the LS candidates in 2019 general elections when the party relied on just six Muslim candidates out of 38 it fielded, a meagre 15%. Three of them –Afzal Ansari from Ghazipur, Danish Ali from Amroha and Haji Fazlur Rehman from Saharanpur – had won the polls.
But the party’s overdependence on Muslim candidates is not sudden.
Maya did a similar experiment in the 2017 UP assembly elections by fielding 99 Muslim candidates. Her move divided the Muslim votes and led to massive victory for BJP which won 313 of 403 assembly seats. Her party itself could win just 19 seats, five of which went to Muslims.
Following a crushing defeat in the 2022 assembly elections where BSP won just one seat and less than 13% vote share, the BSP again relied on Muslims in the urban local body polls in May 2023. The party fielded 11 Muslims as mayoral candidates. UP has 17 mayoral seats and the party won none.
In her rallies in west UP, Mayawati said that the party has given tickets to most Muslims in the region in keeping with its foundational ideology, “Jiski jitni hissedari, uski utni bhagidari”, a slogan coined by party founder Kanshi Ram in 1984. She also appealed to Muslims to vote for her party because BSP also has a Dalit vote bank in west UP, and Muslims and Dalits together are a formidable combination of voters, which can defeat BJP.
In the third phase, voting for which will be held on May 7 on ten seats, Muslim candidates on BSP tickets will contest in Sambhal, Firozabad, Aonla, Badaun and Etah. In the eight seats of west UP that went to polls in the first phase on April 19, BSP fielded Muslims in Saharanpur, Rampur, Moradabad and Pilibhit. In the second phase, for which voting was held on April 26 on eight seats in west UP, BSP fielded Muslim in Amroha.
Some of these seats have the highest concentration of Muslim votes in UP.
The top ten constituencies with highest Muslim population are in west UP. Rampur has 50.1% Muslims, while Moradabad has 45.5%, Bijnor 41.7%, Saharanpur has 39.1%, Muzaffarnagar has 38.1%, Amroha 38%, Bahraich 34.8%, Bareilly 33.9%, Meerut 32.6% and Kairana 30%.
In their rallies, Mayawati and her nephew, Akash Anand, also BSP’s national coordinator, have invariably reminded Muslims of how the Samajwadi Party, after winning the 2022 UP assembly elections never stood for their cause and how they (Muslims) now need to look elsewhere.
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