Muslim fixation led to SP rout?
After near decimation in Lok Sabha polls, soulsearching within Samajwadi Party has begun. SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s fixation for Muslim votes is being blamed within the party for polarisation in Uttar Pradesh.
Sections of party leaders close to UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav claimed that the SP chief wasted too much time wooing, first, the Jama Masjid imam Shahi Ahmed Bukhari, and, then, Jamait Ulema Hind chief Maulana Arshad Madni in the hope of tactical voting by Muslims in favour of the party. “Besides courting these maulanas, the party was already banking heavily on senior UP minister Azam Khan, who kept shooting off irresponsible statements, which in the end hurt party prospect. Now that the party will sit to find faults, leaders will do well to admit that they had gone too far in Muslim appeasement,” said a senior SP leader.
The SP could win just five Lok Sabha seats, which were won by members of Mulayam Singh Yadav family only. “Not only the SP gave disproportionate nominations to Muslim candidates in Lok Sabha elections, the Akhilesh Yadav Cabinet too has large number of ministers from the minority community. But the Lok Sabha verdict has shown that Muslims did not choose the SP as their party for votes in most of the Lok Sabha constituencies. All the five Lok Sabha seats won by the party are Yadav dominated constituencies,” added the SP leader.
Though a section of party leaders close to party chief sought to put the blame on the UP chief minister, sources said, Mr Akhilesh Yadav had hardly been the face of the SP campaign in Lok Sabha elections. “The party went to the polls with Neta ji and Mr Azam Khan as its faces by ignoring the basis of the 2012 UP state poll verdict, which was for a change and new face of the SP. The party has paid price for going back to its old ways of politics to play the Muslim card, which, incidentally, helped the BJP to consolidate support base among castes, which earlier supported the SP,” said another SP leader.