In a first of its kind move, the Uttar Pradesh wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will depute women members from the Muslim community as agents on minority dominant polling booths to keep a check on bogus voters for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
The BJP Minority Morcha, which planned this initiative, said the focus will be on parts of Western U.P. from where the party claims to have received reports of bogus voting in previous elections.
“In the past we have received information of bogus voting in the minority areas which results in a higher turnout. In the last few years, our minority wing has enrolled a large number of Muslim women workers in the BJP fold; we plan to effectively curb the menace of burqa [veil] clad bogus voters. Our Muslim workers will be deputed as the party’s polling agents in their own local respective booths. Since they are aware of the legitimate voters, they will direct the security personnel and authorities to check any suspicious voters. The concerned authorities will check their voter ids, and other valid proofs, and match the same with Election Commission data,” Kunwar Basit Ali, U.P. BJP’s Minority Morcha president, said. Mr. Ali added the target is to cover 40,000 or so polling booths across the State with a particular focus on Western U.P.
Interestingly, several parts of Western U.P., which will vote in first phase on April 19, including Saharanpur, Rampur, Kairana, and Moradabad, boast a sizeable Muslim electorate. In Moradabad and Rampur, the Muslim community constitute roughly half of the total electorate, while in Saharanpur and Kairana, the community hovers between 38 to 42%.
In January, the minority wing of the BJP launched a ‘Shukriya Modi Bhaijaan’‘ or ‘Thanks Brother Modi’ campaign to draw Muslim women towards the saffron party in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The campaign, which had bragged that there was no aloofness between Modi and the Muslim, also focused on the Western U.P. region.
