LUCKNOW: With growing number of Muslim leaders questioning the commitment of the Samajwadi Party to the community despite its unflinching support in the recently held assembly elections, the party may find it tough to keep it in good homour.
Though the resentment brewing among Muslims against the SP is not intense, the party can ignore it only at its peril, say political analysts.
According to them, if the discontent continues for long or intensifies with more voices joining in, the party will have a tough task ahead as the Lok Sabha elections are just two years away. Many Muslims believe that their leaders are being ignored by Akhilesh, for whom the community ensured strongest consolidation in the history of UP Assembly elections.
The latest remark came from a Muslim cleric from Bareilly, Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi, who said that Muslims were “feeling hopeless” after UP assembly elections.
He said that Akhilesh didn’t like Muslims and went on to advise the community to shun the SP and join the BJP. Razvi is also the national general secretary of Tanzeeem Ulma-e-Islam.
Before the cleric’s statement, SP leader Salman Javed Raeen, the party’s secretary for Lambhua Assembly seat, tendered his resignation alleging that no leader in the party was raising voice against “atrocities on Muslims”.
Raeen alleged that Akhilesh kept mum when SP leaders Azam Khan and Nahid Hasan were sent to jail and did not say anything when the petrol pump of SP MLA Shazil Islam was demolished in Bareilly. “A leader who cannot raise voice for his MLAs, how will he stand for his workers,” Raeen said.
Earlier, SP MP from Sambhal, Shafiqur Rehman Barq, who, after casting his vote for MLC elections, said that not all in the Samajwadi Party were working in the interest of Muslims. Though he retracted later, the damage had been done by that time.
Another statement came from the camp of senior leader Azam Khan. His close confidante Fasahat Ali Shanu, who is also his media officer, hit out at Akhilesh directly and said that the SP chief ignored Azam Khan who was also the founder member of the party, and did not allow him to become the leader of the opposition.
“Muslims have always stood by the SP but Akhilesh doesn’t like to share the dais with Muslim leaders. It is because of the Muslim support that the SP could get 111 seats in this Assembly elections,” he said.
These remarks sound alarm bells for the SP and also bring other Opposition parties, especially the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party, into the picture.
More than the BSP, political experts believe that the Congress can look forward to wooing Muslims ahead of Lok Sabha elections. “When it comes to forming the government at the Centre, only Congress has the strength and nationwide acceptability,” they say.
Unlike previous elections, when Muslims mostly voted against the BJP irrespective of the party to which their favourite candidate belonged to, this time they completely backed the SP without taking the candidate into account. They believed that only SP had the potential to form the government if BJP was defeated. This helped SP to bag 111 seats, which was more than double its previous tally of 47.
If Muslims continue with the trend they have adopted in this year’s Assembly election, BSP might not be that strong an option as compared to SP and Congress. Muslims could prefer Congress to BSP even though BSP is in a better position, considering the vote bank, as majority of Jatavs among Dalits are loyal to Mayawati.
If it is a wake up call for the SP, so it is for the Congress and the BSP too. Whosoever succeeds in convincing the minority vote bank ahead of Lok Sabha elections, politics will surely change in UP.
