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Journalism of Courage
In the Uttar Pradesh urban local body elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded 391 Muslim candidates, its highest-ever, with majority of them having filed nominations from seats that have a sizeable presence of the community.
With this, the ruling party in the state has thrown its hat in the ring — test its support base among members of the community ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The two-phase urban local body elections will be held on May 4 and 11 to elect representatives for 14,864 posts across 760 civic bodies in the state.
The 391 Muslim candidates are in the fray for the posts of chairpersons and members of nagar palika parishads and nagar panchayats and corporators in the municipal corporations.
Mayors for 17 municipal corporations, 199 chairpersons for nagar palika parishads and 544 nagar panchayats along with 1,420 corporators, 5,327 members of nagar panchayats and 7,177 members of nagar palika parishads will be elected in the polls.
Many of the nominees are Muslim women, it is learnt.
Of the total 391 Muslim candidates of the BJP, 351 are contesting from muncipal wards for the posts of coroprators and members, 35 for chairpersons of nagar panchayats and five for chairpersons of nagar palika parishads.
The party, however, has not fielded any Muslim candidate for mayoral seats. A party leader said more than 90 per of these candidates are from the Pasmanda Muslim community — both Shia and Sunni.
In the 2017 civic body polls, Muslim candidates were given tickets by the saffron party from only a few seats of corporators and members and there were several seats where the party could not find even a single candidate to contest, said a party leader.
Of the 17 municipal corporations in the state, Ayodhya is the only civic body where the party has not given ticket to any Muslim candidate.
The party has fielded the maximum number of Muslim candidates for corporators’ posts — 21 in Meerut, 17 in Aligarh, 13 in Saharanpur, 11 in Kanpur, five in Bareilly, eight in Moradabad, four in Ghaziabad, three each in Prayagraj and Varanasi, two in Lucknow and one each in Gorakhpur, Jhansi, Agra, Firozabad, Mathura-Vrindavan and Shahjhanpur.
For chairpersons of nagar palika parishads of Tanda and Rampur, the party has fielded two women candidates. Also, from the Suar seat in the district, the party’s ally Apna Dal (S) has fielded a woman candidate.
Likewise, the party has fielded Muslim candidates from the nagar palika parishads of Kakrala in Badaun district, Mubarakpur in Azamgarh district and Afzalgarh in Bijnor district.
Most of the Muslim candidates for nagar panchayat chairpersons’ posts are from Meerut, Baghpat, Amroha, Moradabad, Badaun, Rampur and Bareilly districts. All these districts have a significant number of Muslim voters.
BJP’s minority morcha state president Kunwar Basit Ali said, “In the past, there was no such demand from the community for tickets. This change shows that trust of Muslims in the BJP has increased in the past few years.”
Ali said the trust of Muslims in the BJP has increased because the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre and the Yogi Adityanath-led dispensation in UP provided them benefits of welfare schemes without discrimination.
Another party leader said, “Muslim candidates have been given tickets on the seats dominated by the community only. The response we will receive on the polling day will test the efficacy of the efforts the party made to reach out to the community.”
The party gave benefits of welfare schemes to members of all castes and communities and gave them representation in the UP Legislative Council.
Last month only, the party nominated then Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor to the state Legislative Council.
The party now has four Muslim members in the Legislative Council, the highest-ever representation to the community in the upper House of the Assembly from the party.
