Aiming to win all 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party is sharpening its outreach among the backward caste and Dalit or Pasmanda Muslims, who have benefitted from government welfare schemes like free ration and housing and several others.
The BJP, which had held a state-level Pasmanda Muslim meet, is now planning to hold similar programmes in all major cities of the state.
The Pasmanda community has 41 "castes", including Ansari, Qureshi, Mansoori, Salmani and Siddiqui. They are in professions such as butchery and weaving, and considered most backward in social, economic and political terms. The ruling party claims that it is working for the community's political uplift after their social and economic empowerment.
In Pasmanda Muslim meets, the BJP leaders are highlighting that the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress have always used Muslims as a "vote bank" and have not given them their due.
Uttar Pradesh minister Danish Azad Ansari, who belongs to the weaver community, said, "The Central and state governments have worked for economic and social empowerment of Muslims so far. The BJP now wants political empowerment of Muslims by ensuring their participation."
The common Muslims are getting benefits of government schemes like free ration and housing without discrimination and it is the government’s moral responsibility to stand with them, he added.
President of Uttar Pradesh BJP's minority wing, Kunwar Basit Ali, said this time strong and trusted Muslim BJP workers would be given tickets in elections to the urban local bodies.
"We have planned that people from different groups of Pasmanda Muslims will hold conferences in their societies and BJP leaders will participate in these to convey to them the party’s ideology and government plans," Ali said.
"The BJP government has done as much as it could do for the Pasmanda Muslims. Now, it has to take it from them," he said.