Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BJP are both using secularism as a bait to capture votes in Azamgarh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech here on Thursday argued that the SP has been exploiting communal schisms for electoral benefit, while the SP said the BJP’s “politics of hatred” has torn the social fabric of the State.
“Chanting Pakistan, Pakistan for so long, we have been reduced to Pakistan. Look at our inflation, it is comparable to theirs now,” Suraj Bhan Ram, an auto driver at Belariyaganj, said with disgust at the current political narrative. Mr. Ram belongs to the Chamar caste, a Scheduled Caste community in Uttar Pradesh. He said people have little money to spare and this in turn has reduced the number of passengers he gets each day.
At an election rally in Lalganj, Azamgarh, Mr. Modi on Thursday said the district had become infamous as the breeding ground of terrorism, with the SP providing political cover to the “sleeper cells”. “Under the cover of secularism, the SP had been indulging in vote bank politics,” he said. He reiterated his earlier comments on redirecting the reservation quota and redistributing wealth to the SP-Congress’ ‘vote bank’.
