With almost entire prospect of Congress dependent on Muslim vote bank in the biggest state having maximum of 80 Parliament seats in the coming Elections but still the Congress `Core-Group’, which selected the candidates surprised everyone when they ignored the community while distributing tickets particularly in Bundelkhand, Central UP, Eastern UP and Awadh region, the block where the Party won maximum seats during last lok Sabha Elections.
Interestingly, the entire list announced so far consists of only 10 Muslim faces out of which even two Nagma and Vishali, were Hindus though they got married in Muslim families. Nagma also got ticket after Congress cancelled the candidature of Dayanand Gupta. Besides, now only four more seats, Varanasi, Allahabad, Sambhal and
Chanduli, are left to announced, sources confirmed that Party had no Muslim leaders on the list of probables. It may be mentioned here that Party is in no mood to field candidates from Mainpuri, Kannauj and Ferojabad, where Mulayam Singh Yadav and his kin were contesting. The decision was taken as Samajwadi Party is also not fielding any candidate from Amethi and Rae Bareli seats.
Sources said that after projection of Narendra Modi as prime ministerial candidate of Bharatiya Janta Party, Congress get a shot in the arm hoping that they would grab the Muslim vote bank as the minority community would be looking for a strong opposition which could stop Gurjat chief minister from coming close to prime minister’s chair. This would prove a boon for the Congress as otherwise they were hoping of resting less then half a dozen seats.
However, the list announced by the Congress after meeting of their `Core-Group’ mainly comprising of Rahul Gandhi, Madhusudan Mistri (AICC general secretary and incharge of Party affairs here in UP) and Nirmal Khatri (State president), shocked everyone after they found that the members of the community, on which the Party is entirely dependent for victory, failed to find a respectable number of seats. In most of the regions, the community has been almost completely ignored.
In Bundelkhand region, while the Party fielded last time winner Pradeep Jain Aditya from Jhansi, it gave ticket to sitting MlA Vivek Singh from Banda, Vijay Chowdhary from Jalaun (reserverd) and Jaywant Singh from Hamirpur. None of the four Bundelkhand seat had any Muslim candidate. Similarly in Central UP, the Party fielded Upendra Singh Jatav from Agra (reserved) seat,
Chowdhary Bijendra Singh from Aligarh, Shree Prakash Jaiswal from Kanpur (Sitting MP), Rajarampal from Akbarpur (Sitting MP), Usha Maurya from Fatehpur. Similarly in Awadh region, just one candidate Vaishali Ali (also a Hindu though married to Muslim) would be Muslim face so far as in remaining seats, Party gave ticket to Om Prakash Rawat from Misrikh (reserved) seat, Annu Tandon from Unnao (sitting MP), Narendra Gautam from Mohanlalganj (reserved), Reeta Bahuguna Joshi from lucknow, Sonia Gandhi from Rae Bareli (sitting MP), Rahul Gandhi from Amethi (sitting MP), Amita Modi from Sultanpur, Pl Punia from Barabanki (reserved), Nirmal Khatri from Faizabad (sitting MP), Kamal Kishore from Bahraich (reserved), Ashok Singh from Ambedkarnagar etc.
If one puts an eye on the Congress trust on Muslims in Eastern UP, one would find almost similar status. From Sharwasti, Congress fielded Vinay Kumar Pandey aka Binno Pandey (Sitting MP), Sanjay Jaiswal from Basti, Harshwardhan Singh from Maharajganj (sitting MP), Astbhuja Tewari from Gorakhpur, RPN Singh from Kushninagar (sitting MP), Sabha Kumar Kushwaha from Deoria, Beni Prasad Verma from Gonda (sitting MP), Rani Ratna Singh from Pratapgarh (Sitting MP), Dr Sanjay
Kumar from Bansgaon (reserved), Balibihari Babu from lalganj (reserved), Arvind Jaiswal from Azamgarh, Rashtra Kunwar Singh from Ghosi, Bhola Pandey from Salempur, Sudha Rai from Balia, Ravi Kishen from Jaunpur, Bhagwati Prasad Chowdhary from Robertsganj (reserved), laliteshpati Tripathi from Mirjapur, Mahendra
Gautam from Kushinagar (reserved), Tarun Patel from Domriyaganj, Rohit Pandey from Sant Kabir Nagar, Tufani Nishad from Machlisaher (reserved) and Mukesh Singh from Kaiserganj. While candidates from Varanasi, Allahabad and Chandauli seats in Eastern UP are yet to be announced while it is almost sure that Party had no plan to field any Muslim candidate from there, so the list so far included only three Muslims from Eastern UP, i.e Mohamed Kaif from Phoolpur in Allahabad, Mohd Masood Khan from Ghazipur and Sartaj Imam from Bhadohi.