UP Elections 2017: BSP hopes for Balha seat rest on a Dalit-Muslim love story

The constituency borders Nepal and is part of the Terai region, which remains susceptible to religious polarisation. Of Balha’s 3.5 lakh voters, Muslims (90,000) and Dalits (80,000) form the largest chunk.

Khan, who belongs to Azamgarh, and Bharti, from Gautam Budh Nagar, first met when she came to take part in an inter-university athletic competition held at DU in 1992. Khan was secretary of the Delhi University Students’ Union at the time, while Bharti was pursuing a course in physiotherapy from Lady Hardinge Medical College.

The two got married in 1994, despite initial opposition from the two families, and live with their three sons and a daughter in Lucknow. Khan is now a full-time politician and runs a construction firm, having given up his practice as a physician.

Khan admits that as the last Muslim secretary of the DUSU and having been part of student politics, it was he who was always keen on politics. That changed when he went to meet Mayawati for a ticket for Mubarakpur seat in Azamgarh district before the 2012 Assembly polls. When the party coordinator who was accompanying Khan told the BSP chief that his wife was a Dalit, Mayawati felt Bharti would be a good choice from Balha, which is reserved for Scheduled Castes.

“The party coordinator was trying to praise me before Behenji and told her about my wife. She then asked me if I would be interested in getting my wife to contest the election. I said yes. From the one trying to fight an election, I became the one helping someone fight the election,” Khan smiles.

In the 2012 Assembly polls, while Bharti lost to the BJP’s Savitri Bai Phule from Balha, she relegated the SP’s veteran leader Shabbir Balmiki to the third position. “We had shifted to Balha just 15 days before the elections and still we got such strong support,” says Khan.

This time, he and Bharti are campaiging separately, with different teams, to cover maximum ground before canvassing comes to an end on Saturday evening. Balha goes to polls on Monday, along with 51 other constituencies.

Khan says they are very optimistic about their chances. “Over 90 per cent Muslims and over 90 per cent Dalits are firmly with us here. In this constituency, we have already built the Dalit-Muslim combine.”

While BJP leaders continue to project the SP as their main opponent and say they will get Dalit votes, they admit in private that Bharti is giving a tough fight to BJP candidate Akshyabar Lal. “She is getting Muslim support because of her husband. Nearly 90 per cent Muslims are voting for her. She will also get Dalit votes,” says a local BJP leader.

The SP, which had won the seat from the BJP in a 2014 bypoll, after Phule moved to the Lok Sabha, has fielded sitting MLA and Minister of State Banshidhar Baudh. In keeping with its policy, the BSP had stayed away from the bypoll.