Eight years and three major elections later, the Muslim ‘vote bank’ is quiet in 2022 – although the community that makes up more than 19% of UP’s population still results through its numerical strength in 120 of the 403 assembly constituencies. can affect.
What was its strength became its weakness after 2014 when not a single Muslim MP from Uttar Pradesh made it to the Lok Sabha. The community has 20% or more people in over 120 seats, but the number of Muslim legislators has come down to 25 – from 68 in 2012, the highest ever in the UP assembly.
Numbers matter, but not always. Muslims are over 50% of Rampur’s population; 47% in Moradabad and Sambhal; 43% in Bijnor; 41% in Saharanpur; Over 40% in Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Amroha; between 30% and 40% in five more districts; and 20% to 30% in 12 districts. And yet, the community has recently acquired a mute-viewer image. Hopefully things will change this time.
Silence is not limited to society. Political parties have been silent on ‘Muslim issues’ – seen as a strategy to prevent counter-polarization of Hindu votes. Non-BJP parties have remained silent on a number of community-related topics: openly supporting the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Uttar Pradesh, which killed more than 20 people, or fielding Muslim candidates.
The Samajwadi Party has not shown how many Muslim candidates it has fielded, while Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has shifted its focus from Dalit-Muslim to Dalit-Brahmin alliance. No major opposition party has made any promise to a particular community in its manifesto.
Many Muslims see this silence as the right move to prevent further polarization of votes.
“It seems that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was unable to get a grip on communal issues like Kabiristan Vs Communal issues. burial sites: which he had done in the past. Had Samajwadi Party, BSP or Congress participated in the anti-CAA protests or farmers’ protests, the BJP would have politically blunt those movements,” said Imran Asad, a businessman from Bhadohi.
Historian and principal of Shri DR Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Varanasi Mohammad Arif He said the community has now come together to regain its electoral importance. “During elections, there is no use in taking out processions and raising demands. The community is quiet, but talking and discussing. We have tried to make people understand that social bonding is necessary and also unity.
There is more, and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s state chief Maulana Ashad Rashidi explained: “In a democracy like India, it is not about holding a community together but ensuring that the secular vote remains undivided. ”
But it was this ‘unity’ that isolated the community as a separate faction—with singular problems. “This created an image that Muslims were being treated differently, though their problems were the same as those of the rest of the population,” said Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahli, the imam of Lucknow’s biggest Idgah in Aishbagh. “This time, Muslims are being demarcated not as a separate part, but as a homogeneous part of the electorate. This is excellent for a secular democracy,” said the Maulana.
Top Shia cleric Maulana Saif Abbas He said the community has formed the Uttar Pradesh Democratic Forum, which includes several national organizations, to persuade Muslim voters to vote. “In 2017, we found that the voting percentage of the community was less than 50%,” he said.
The Maulana said that the Manch was happy that the people responded to his appeal in the constituencies going to the polls in the first phase. The population in six of the nine districts that went to the polls in the second round on February 14 is 30% from the community.
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