Aiming to eclipse the Owaisi effect on its traditional Muslim vote bank ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is set to consolidate his Muslim supporters from an unlikely destination - Mumbai. And not without reason.
On February 16, Yadav will address a rally in Mumbai, which has a sizeable expatriate Muslim populace from east UP and also where Owaisi’s MIM has made a toehold by winning two seats in the last Assembly polls. What has triggered hopes of the Samajwadi Party boss is the fact that the MIM has fared poorly in the municipal polls in its pocket burrough - Hyderabad.
SP sources stressed that there is aconsiderable number of Muslims from eastren UP working in Mumbai and they return to their native places during the elections.
The Maharashtra unit of SP has invited Yadav to address the ‘desh bachao, desh banao’ rally in Mumbai so that a clear message goes across the nation against communal and divisive forces like Sangh Parivar and the MIM,’’said SP state chief of Maharashtra, Abu Asim Azmi.
The SP mandarins feel that the MIM could be a spoiler for the party in the 2017 Assembly polls even if it is able to cut a few thousand Muslim votes in any segment.
In the imminent by-polls in Bikapur (Faizabad) on February 13, the MIM has fielded a candidate. The MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has also addressed two big meetings earlier this month in Bikapur constituency.
Piror to the Bihar polls in October 2014, the MIM was threatening to make inroads into Muslim vote base of the SP, prompting it to dub the Hyderabad leader as ‘new Jinnah’. However the rout of the MIM in Bihar last year and later in elections to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation this month has come as a relief for the SP think tank. Azmi meanhwile contended that the Mulayam’s rally has nothing to do with the recent diatribe of Shiv Sena against UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav over the concert of Pakistani singer Gulam Ali in lucknow.
The Sena had lashed out at the CM over Ali’s concert in lucknow Mahotsav and branded UP as an Islamic state. It also alleged that the UP government has started anti -national business for appeasement politics. Azmi clarified that the SP did not take cognizance of fringe elements like Sena and was concerned over rising communal temperature in the country.