BSP's major thrust to win over Muslim votes

The BSP in Uttar Pradesh has embarked on an image-building drive to attract the Muslims and consolidate Dalit votes

The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh has embarked on a stupendous task of honing its strategic skills in order to garner Muslim votes in the State.

The party is not hesitant to admit the fact that a major chunk of this vote-bank has been aligning itself with the Samajwadi Party. The BSP strategy for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh election is to make the Muslim voters understand that all this while, their support to the Samajwadi Party has made them losers and not beneficiaries.

To this effect, the party has produced a booklet titled,  ‘Muslim Community’s True Well-wisher:Your Decision, Your Choice’, which has been published in Hindi as well as Urdu. The booklet is set to reach out to each and every Muslim household in the State.

Around 19 per cent of the total population in Uttar Pradesh comprises Muslims, with Dalits amounting to a whopping 23 per cent. The BSP aspires to tap this huge chunk of Muslim and Dalit vote-bank to facilitate a smooth ride to form a Government next year.

Interestingly, in the 1990s, the Muslim vote-bank was largely supportive of the Congress. However, in this decade, equations have changed completely after the rise of the Ram Mandir movement and the knocking down of the controversial structure at Ayodhya in December 1992.

The BSP held both the Congress and the BJP responsible for these debacles. The first two polls saw Muslims voting whole-heartedly for the SP, but in the next election there was a shift towards in pattern towards strategic voting.

The idea was to vote for anyone with the potential to win; anyone! Though the BSP gained marginally in return, the SP remained the preferred choice. Somehow, Muslims still retain a feeling of mistrust towards the BSP even though the party claims to have no allegiance with the BJP whatsoever. The BSP is also jogging the Muslim voters’ memory on Babri mosque demolition.

When SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav claimed that the decision to give orders to shoot kar sevaks in Ayodhya was primarily to avert the Babri mosque demolition, the Muslims had little reason to believe him and nothing to rejoice about in response!

According to the BSP, the BJP will be the one benefitting from such religion-based polarisation in the long-run, and not the Muslims. The booklet alleges that the SP dissociated from Nitish Kumar-lalu Prasad coalition at the behest of certain BJP leaders.

It points out that since 2012, Uttar Pradesh has witnessed more than 400 incidents of communal riots across the State; inflicting irreparable damage to the life and property of Muslims.

Other issues that the BSP would go to town with, are:

• Why was Kalyan Singh, the man instrumental in demolishing the Babri mosque,  allowed to join the SPIJ
•  Why was Sakshi Maharaj, the first person to raise the shovel at Babri mosque, bestowed a Rajya Sabha seatIJ
•  2009: The State of Uttar Pradesh had a BSP Government during the 2009 lok Sabha election. Unfortunately, the BJP had to be content with just nine  seats out of 80. In 2014, with a SP Government at the helm, the equation took a turn and the BJP clinched a total of 73 seats.

(The writer is Associate Editor, The Pioneer)