Rampur braces for post-Azam Khan era as BJP, SP battle for his pocket borough
Both the parties are ghting the shadow of the veteran leader, now lodged in a Sitapur jail; the SP is putting its might behind Maulana Mohibullah, a choice of party chief Akhilesh Yadav, while BJP has placed faith again in incumbent MP Ghanshyam Singh Lod
Azam Khan’s apparition looms large over the Lok Sabha election in Rampur even as the veteran Samajwadi Party (SP) leader spends the polling day in a jail in Sitapur in eastern Uttar Pradesh. While the party leadership says all is well within the Samajwadi family, it is cautiously preparing the Muslim-dominated constituency for a postAzam era.
After a lot of rankling over the candidates in Rampur and the neighbouring Moradabad, in Maulana Mohibullah, the party has elded a candidate who is diametrically opposite to Mr. Khan in tone and tenor. He doesn’t belong to any camp, had the blessings of party veteran Shaqur Rahman Barq who passed away recently, and has successfully kept the campaign localised and low-pitched.
Local party leaders feel being a senior cleric (of Delhi’s Parliament Street mosque), Mr. Mohibullah, a Turk, will get the support of numerically less but socio-politically more inuential Rohilla Pathans in the region.
Muslin vote division
The BJP, which snatched the seat with around 55% of the electorate Muslim from the SP in the bypoll after Mr. Khan was convicted in a series of cases, is hoping that a division in Muslim vote on caste and camp lines will work to the advantage of their candidate Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi, once a chum of Mr. Khan.
Danish Ansari, the lone Muslim Minister in the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet, has extensively worked on the Pasmanda vote in the area. BJP’s hope also lies with Bahujan Samaj Party, which has made the contest triangular by elding a Pathan to milk the discontent in the SP ranks.
The Azam group, meanwhile, is refusing to reveal its cards. “We were not involved in the campaign. We are not dejected as our leader is Azam bhai, who has fought several political battles,” said a close acolyte of the senior party leader.
The Congress and the royal family also hold some inuence in the constituency. While former Congress MP Begum Noor Bano has extended support to the SP candidate, one of her grandsons is an MLA from Apna Dal (Sonelal), a part of the NDA, from Suar.
A choice of party president Akhilesh Yadav, the SP is putting its might behind Mr. Mohibullah, who took a slow but calculated start. In the villages, the candidate brings in his family’s farming background and presents himself as the son of a farmer who still earns his living from agriculture.
Reaching out to Dalits
He reached out to Dalit families in Milak who were aected by the death of a teenager in police ring. In the city, he is presenting the image of a progressive cleric who has a working wife and whose children go to a convent school. “I am here to serve everybody and spread positivity,” he said in a conversation with The Hindu.
The BJP made attacks on Mr. Mohibullah’s personal life by claiming that he has multiple wives. “When he lost his rst wife to cancer, he remarried but it ended in a divorce. After that he married again,” said Shakeel Ahmad, chairman of the SP minority cell.
‘Have to move on’
At the SP o£ce, everybody is respectful of Azam bhai, but not many are missing him. Many feel that it was his ego clash with the then District Magistrate, now the Commissioner of Moradabad, that contributed to making the people of Rampur a target of the administration. “We have to move on. Our works are getting stuck,” said Muslim Sai, a small-time contractor.
At the BJP head o£ce, the cadre’s response to Mr. Khan’s impact on the election is mixed. They are happy that their MLA Akash Saxena, who led the legal campaign against the SP leader, has given them the ‘revenge’ of the ‘wrongs’ of the past.
Unlike the bypoll, in which the voting percentage was very low, BJP workers know an election in Rampur can’t be won without the Muslim voter. Fasahat Ali Khan Shanu, once the right-hand man of Mr. Khan, is now holding meetings in Muslim colonies explaining the value of government schemes to secure the victory of the BJP candidate. Another former supporter of Mr. Khan who has now switched to the BJP said it was going well for the ruling party but after the razing of a mosque by the Uttarakhand administration in Haldwani episode and don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s death in jail, “the narrative has changed”.
Some BJP workers doubt the Muslim outreach would work. “Musalman bhramit kar raha hai (Muslims are confusing us),” said Awadesh Sharma, a senior party functionary in the local unit, who feels community members are seeking political patronage but won’t vote for the BJP.