Communites veering towards candidate and not parties

NAGPUR: Unlike the Lok Sabha elections where people and even entire communities voted on the basis of party affiliations and leanings, in the Maharashtra assembly elections, communities are giving focusing on individual candidates rather than parties.
While, there are certain unsaid agreements among the members, largely, communities are voting according to the work of the candidates of their residential area.They are not going in for one political party, especially in the backdrop of the split in the alliances of the state.
“While we urge our community members to go and vote, we don’t compel them to vote in a particular manner. They are quite enlightened and vote for the person that they deem best for their area,” said Bishop Paul Dupare of Nagpur Diocese of Church of North India.
Members of the Muslim community too seem to be thinking on similar lines and development is indeed a very important factor. “Constituency’s development is over the community’s choice in this regard. Even though community appeasement is there, the public mind this time is directed towards the candidate’s development agenda,” said Riyaz Ali, a businessman.
This trend is especially a characteristic of Assembly elections where the candidates are more and cover smaller areas under their constituencies. This also takes communities away from swinging towards a single party. “Compared to the Lok Sabha elections, people are going toward individual candidates rather than parties, mainly because the issues in this election are much more local,” said Dupare.
Indeed, this is apparent in the decisions being taken by different minority communities in North Nagpur. “We are traditionally supporters of one party and in the rest of the city our community members are going to be backing that party. But here, we are going to vote for the candidate of the other party because he has done a lot of good work for us,” said a North Nagpur resident belonging to a minority community.
Another North Nagpur resident said, “Members of Sikh, Sindhi and Muslim community are all going to vote for him, whether their political allegiance lies with the opposite party or not. We know, this is against the tradition of voting for the party, but this time it is for his work.”
Many members of the minority communities think that the situation has also become complicated due to the split in the alliances. “Appeasement of communities does take place in every election and this time, the vote bank politics will rise owing to the break-up of alliance. Islam urges its followers ‘to be loyal to the land you live on and on which you earn your livelihood’ and therefore it encourages us to put the sate over community in this matter,” said Hasnain Shakir, Businessman.
(With inputs from Mustafa Rasheed)