How Azam Khan’s letter from prison has cast a shadow on SP-Congress ties

In the letter, written on SP district president Ajay Sagar’s letterhead, Khan urged the party to raise in Parliament the issue of “atrocities against Muslims in Rampur” like they were raising the Sambhal issue.

“The INDIA bloc has become a mute spectator to the downfall of Rampur and has worked to finish the Muslim leadership there. It should make its stand clear and will have to contemplate on the condition and the future of Muslims,” read the letter, adding that the country’s largest religious minority community cannot be just used as a vote bank by those who “conspire against it” and “merely show sympathy”.

Sagar said he had gone to meet Khan in jail and only released the letter because he was asked to. “The party leadership has not contacted me. He (Khan) just spoke from his heart and according to his wishes, I just conveyed it,” he said.

The letter comes months after Khan’s relations soured with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav over the nomination of Mohibbullah Naqvi as the candidate for the Rampur Lok Sabha seat, which Khan represented for several years. Naqvi, a fierce critic of Khan, won by over 90,000 votes even as the Congress-SP combine collectively won 43 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. The SP registered its best-ever performance, winning 37 seats. Earlier too, Khan had expressed unhappiness with the SP for “not doing enough” to get him out of jail.

The SP state leadership seemed to distance itself from the letter. While party leader Rajendra Chaudhary said Khan was a senior leader and the party was doing everything to stand by him, former SP MP M T Hassan termed his statement “personal”.

“His remarks do not reflect the views of the Muslim leadership in the SP. I was denied a ticket because of him but the fact remains that the SP is the only well-wisher of the Muslim community,” he said.

Congress leaders, however, more such statements may emerge if the SP does not rein in its leaders. “Action must be initiated against these leaders who are going against the party stand but the SP is keeping mum. No matter what the SP leaders claim, minorities in the state are looking up to the Congress just like the Dalits,” a senior Congress leader said.

The war of words has also cast a shadow on the cohesion between the alliance partners in the coming Assembly session that begins on December 18, especially after differences emerged between the allies over seat-sharing for the recent Assembly bypolls.

The SP left just two of the nine seats for the Congress, which eventually decided to stay out of the bypoll race. In a major jolt to the INDIA bloc, the BJP and its allies won seven of the nine seats, including the Muslim-dominated seat of Kundarki. In a bid to “defuse” tensions, Akhilesh visited Khan’s house last month and said that the party stood firmly behind him.

In more signs that the two allies may not be on the same page, SP MP from Mainpuri, Dimple Yadav on Wednesday expressed “displeasure” about the disruption in Parliament proceedings over the Gautam Adani and George Soros issues. “The SP is neither with the Adani issue nor with the Soros issue. We want Parliament to function,” she said, taking a different stand from the Congress that has been aggressively raising the Adani issue in a bid to counter the government.

On Monday, asked about the leadership of the INDIA alliance, SP general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Ram Gopal Yadav said as of now Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge was “the leader of the INDIA bloc”. He was replying to a question from reporters in Saifai in UP about whether he saw Rahul Gandhi as head of the alliance.

Another Congress leader said the party was adopting a wait-and-watch approach. “We will see if the SP will take us along in the Assembly when they raise issues on the floor of the House. Right now, we can only wait and watch,” the leader said.

While the Congress has already planned a gherao of the Assembly on December 18 to protest against the allegedly deteriorating law and order situation in the state, the SP has yet to announce its strategy for the session.