In the run-up to the assembly polls, two key political parties in Uttar Pradesh catapulted twin Muslim faces to center stage within 24 hours — Congress’ Imran Masood elevated as AICC secretary and BSP’s Shah Alam promoted as legislative party leader in the UP assembly — has indeed expected to focus the spotlight on minority vote consolidation.
Experts, on the other hand, see this as a potential catalyst for dividing Muslim votes between the Samajwadi Party, the BSP, and the Congress, to the benefit of the BJP, which is up against a ferocious opposition, especially from the Samajwadi Party. On Thursday, both Masood and Shah Alam received increment in responsibilities by the Congress and the BSP, respectively.
Mayawati’s decision on Thursday to fire two veteran OBC leaders — Lalji Verma and Ram Achal Rajbhar — who defied the 2017 BJP wave to win Katehari and Akbarpur assembly seats in Kanshi Ram’s political crucible, Ambedkarnagar, is being watched with interest by the saffron ranks, which is working overtime to retain its OBC vote-bank.
To counter a belligerent ally-turned-rebel, Suhaildev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chairman Om Prakash Rajbhar, who has been hobnobbing with Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) president Shivpal Yadav for quite some time, the BJP is courting Rajbhar, a significant OBC group. Imran Masood, on the other hand, is a significant Muslim face of the Congress, primarily in communally sensitive western Uttar Pradesh. Masood, a former vice-president of the UP Congress Committee, campaigned for the Nakur assembly seat in Saharanpur in 2017, but lost by 4,000 votes to BJP’s Dharam Singh Saini. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he was again given ticket by the Congress to run from Saharanpur.
Masood, on the other hand, was defeated by SP-backed BSP candidate Haji Fazlur Rehman.
Masood’s elevation to Congress national secretary drew a stern rebuke from the BJP, with state president Swatantra Dev Singh accusing the grand old party of displaying its “true ideology” by elevating a leader who once threatened to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Similarly, BSP politician Shah Alam aka Guddu Jamali is a prominent Muslim leader from Azamgarh, Akhilesh Yadav’s parliamentary district. Alam, a two-term member of the Mubarakpur assembly, ran for the Lok Sabha from Azamgarh in 2014 but lost to SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Muslim voters have always supported a political party that may provide a serious challenge to the BJP.
