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The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is contesting alone in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, has over the last couple of days floated the names of candidates for three western Uttar Pradesh seats — Saharanpur, Amroha and Moradabad.
Crucially, all the three candidates belong to the Muslim community and might cut into the minority votes that the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress combine is hoping to gain.
At party events held in the three constituencies in the past week, the BSP told workers that Irfan Saifi was being fielded from Moradabad, while Mujahid Hussain and Majid Ali would contest from Amroha and Saharanpur respectively.
Saifi, who is an OBC Muslim, is currently the chairman of the Thakurdwara Nagar Palika in Moradabad district.
In 2019, the BSP had not contested from Moradabad, as the seat had gone to the SP in their alliance. The SP’s S T Hasan had a huge victory, winning by 97,878 votes.
This time, it is the SP and Congress which have an alliance, and Moradabad has been retained by the SP as part of the arrangement. The SP is yet to declare a candidate from the seat.
Hussain, who has been fielded from Amroha, is seen as belonging to a higher caste among Muslims and is a businessman, while his wife Bage Jahan is chairperson of the Dasna nagar panchayat of the Ghaziabad district. As part of its arrangement with the SP, the Congress is to contest Amroha.
The BSP had won the seat in 2019 by 63,248 votes. But its MP Danish Ali was suspended in 2023 for “anti-party activities”. Ali’s recent appearance at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra has fuelled speculations that he will be fielded by the Congress from the seat.
In Saharanpur, Ali, also an OBC Muslim and former zilla parishad chairperson, replaces Haji Fazlur Rehman, a BSP MP who was elected in 2019. Rehman had won the seat last time by 22,417 votes.
All the three seats have a substantial Muslim and Dalit population and the SP-BSP alliance in 2019 benefited from their partnership. This time, the SP-Congress combine hopes that Muslims will rally behind them, but with the BSP also fielding strong Muslim candidates, there could be a split in votes.
Interestingly, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP had won all these three seats, the BSP, which was contesting alone, had finished third, but with a vote share larger than the margin between the winner and the runner-up. In Moradabad, the BJP’s Kunwar Sarvesh Kumar had got 43% votes, while the SP’s S T Hasan, the runner-up, had got 35.26% votes, and the BSP’s Haji Mohammad Yaqoob 14.27% votes.
In Amroha, the BJP’s Kanwar Singh Tanwar had polled 48.26% of the votes. The SP’s Humera Akhtar had finished second by getting 33.82 % votes and the BSP’s Farhat Hasan had got 14.87% votes.
BJP’s Raghav Lakhan Pal had won Saharanpur by getting 39.59% votes. The Congress’ Imran Masood was runner-up with 34.14% votes. The BSP’s Jagdish Singh Rana ended up getting 19.67% of the votes.
The announcement of the three names comes before an official list of candidates. A detailed list of seats and candidates will be announced by party president Mayawati after the election schedule is out, sources in the BSP said.
A senior BSP leader said, “As per the party’s rules, these candidates have been announced as in-charges for respective Lok Sabha constituencies. Once elections are announced, they will be our official candidates. They have been asked to open their election offices and start preparing on the ground.”
The leader added that all three candidates “belong to their respective constituencies” and have a “good connect with voters across religions and castes”.
“These leaders are capable of developing a bond with people and winning the seats,” the leader said.
