At a time when the BSP,the Samajwadi Party and the Congress are wooing Muslims,the Peace Party threatens to upset their calculations. In the short time since it was formed in 2008,the party has created its own political space,with the agenda of helping a Muslim become the Uttar Pradesh chief minister. The Peace Party has so far declared 215 candidates,besides entering into an alliance with the Bundelkhand Congress Party and the late Sone Lal Patels Apna Dal. We will contest 230 seats,including 70 seats in western UP,while the Apna Dal and Bundelkhand Congress have got their share of 130 and 40 seats respectively, says Ramashankar Singh,a retired bureaucrat and Peace Party spokesperson. While the partys list of candidates has raised eyebrows because of the number of tainted figures it includes,the Peace Party has also grabbed eyeballs for the retired IAS and IPS officers it has attracted. Its team of poll strategists includes several ex-bureaucrats,the most prominent being former UP DGP Yashpal Singh. Singhs son Yashraj is the Peace Partys nominee from Gonda. Yashpal Singh has been made in charge of the party in the Terai belt,comprising districts which share boundaries with Nepal, says Ramashankar Singh. Organisational work has also been given to retired IAS officers,including Ramashankar himself,S P Arya and former IPS officer Brijendra Singh,who retired as inspector general-rank officer from the UP police. We are a new party. Retired officers will become the partys face during the election campaign, Ramashankar says. Peace Party president Dr Mohammad Ayub is planning to tour the entire state in a hired helicopter. He is himself a candidate from Khalilabad seat in Sant Kabir Nagar district while his son will contest from Azamgarhs Mubarakpur,where backward Muslims have a strong presence. In the past one year too,Ayub has been touring the state,trying to expand his partys base in western UP districts such as Moradabad,Meerut,Saharanpur and Baghpat where Muslims can tilt the electoral balance. While acknowledging Ayubs emergence as a recognisable face in Muslim politics,Hari Joshi,editor of a local newspaper in Meerut,cautions: Although his meetings are seeing good crowds in these areas,it is to be seen how much gets translated into votes. Ayub had earlier formed an alliance with the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal,but this came apart after Singh joined hands with the Congress. Sources in the RLD said it was the number of Muslim voters attending Peace Party meetings in Ajit Singhs Baghpat Lok Sabha constituency that prompted the short-lived alliance between the two parties. The Peace Party had first drawn attention when its candidates performed well in five Lok Sabha constituencies of eastern UP in 2009. In June 2010,the party got more votes than the Samajwadi Party and Congress in the by-election for the Domariyaganj Assembly seat.
