Uttar Pradesh, where Muslims account for nearly 20% of the state’s population of over 200 million, has elected 6 Members of Parliament (MP) from the minority community in the recently concluded 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
In the 2014 general elections, not even a single Muslim candidate could register a win at hustings, although more than 40 candidates were given tickets by prominent political parties including Congress, Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) from different constituencies in the state, which elects the maximum number of 80 Lok Sabha members. In 2009 polls, 7 Muslim candidates had won from UP.
In these polls, the ‘mahagathbandhan’, comprising SP and BSP, had fielded a total of 10 Muslim candidates in the state. While, SP had given tickets to four Muslim candidates, BSP had placed its bet on 6 members of the minority community.
After counting of votes yesterday, three Muslim candidates each from the SP and BSP camps were declared elected.
SP Muslim candidates, who tasted electoral success, included Mohd Azam Khan (Rampur), S T Hasan (Moradabad) and Shafiqur Rehman Barq (Sambhal). Likewise, BSP Muslim nominees declared elected in UP included Hazi Fazlur Rehman (Saharanpur), Kunwar Danish Ali (Amroha) and Afzal Ansari (Ghazipur), who defeated union minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha.
Congress, which had contested nearly 70 seats in UP, had given tickets to 8 Muslim candidates. However, none of them could win. The grand old party could just win a single seat in the state from Rae Bareli, where United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi was in the fray. However, she witnessed her victory margin shrink by about 45% to 160,000 compared to 350,000 in 2014 polls.
Prominent among Congress’ Muslim nominees, who bit the dust in these elections, were Imran Masood (Saharanpur), Naseemuddin Siddiqui (Bijnore), Salman Khurshid (Farrukhabad), Imran Pratapgarhi (Moradabad), Saleem Iqbal Sherwani (Badaun) etc.
Ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had not fielded any Muslim candidate in UP, while the other parties had also given far lesser number of tickets to the nominees belonging to the minority community fearing counter polarisation of the majority community during elections. In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, SP and BSP had fielded 13 and 19 Muslim candidates respectively, while Congress had placed its bets on 9 Muslim candidates.
Earlier, political pundits had termed it a ‘strategic’ move by the ‘mahagathbandhan’ to pre-empt the division of votes and deny BJP any leeway in trying to polarise polls by raking up the issue of the SP and BSP fielding higher number of Muslim candidates, especially in context of the contemporary political narrative woven around nationalism and national security. However, this strategy backfired since BJP and its ally Apna Dal (S) won 64 seats in UP, while the grand alliance could wrest only 15 seats.