The Uttar Pradesh government has stepped up its efforts for reaching out to the minority community as it plans to promote health and education-related infrastructure development projects in areas having significant Muslim population. The recent victory of the BJP in bypolls to two Lok Sabha seats (Rampur and Azamgarh) has added to confidence of the ruling party. The BJP wrested both the seats with sizeable muslim population from the Samajwadi Party.
The state government, with the help of the Centre, has allocated funds to set up health and education-related projects in districts like Rampur, Saharanpur, Amroha, Bulandshahr, Hapur and Ghazipur. All these districts have a high Muslim population. A medical facility will be established in Suar in Rampur district while a 100-bed girls’ hostel will be set up in Bulandshahr and Saharanpur and a medical facility centre will be built in Hapur. Girls’ hostels and other facilities are also proposed to be established in some other districts.
The ruling party claimed that the Muslim community receives the bulk of development and welfare programmes of the BJP-led Central and state governments and that these initiatives will help in further consolidating the goodwill.
“Development projects in Muslim-dominated areas have been there since 2014. These initiatives will help further. The uplift of the Muslim community is continuously taking place under the BJP government. The community comprising almost 18% of the population of the state gets a share of more than 30 per cent in the social security schemes of the Central and state governments such as Prime Minister Awas Yojana, Prime Minister Ujjwala Yojana, Mudra Loans and Free Ration Scheme.
In recent times, the BJP has made a renewed effort to reach out to the Muslim community, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasising on the need to reach the Pasmanda (backward) Muslims in his speech to the BJP’s national executive. The party’s reach shows that it wants to get a fair share of the vote from Muslims, who have traditionally been considered the vote bank of its rival parties in the politically important state.
Following the success in the 2022 UP Assembly polls, the BJP appointed Danish Azad Ansari, who is from the Pasmanda community, a state minister for minorities in the Adityanath government, and Chaudhary Kafil-Ul-Wara, who belongs to the weaver community, as the president of Uttar Pradesh Urdu Akademi.