In UP, Cong roadmap to wean Muslims from SP: ‘Quiet meetings’ to invoking leadership history

Alam said, “We are making people aware how the Congress is the only party which has given the country Muslim leaders after Independence. No one talks about chief ministers like Syeda Anwar Taimur (Assam), M O Hasan Farook (Pondicherry), and others. We want to make people aware of these names. Why has UP not had a Muslim CM despite the numbers of Muslims being so high in the state.” The Muslim community accounts for about 20 per cent population of UP.

Alam said one of the messages the Congress wants to send to Muslims is that they “should stop being negative voters”. “There is always this perception or burden on Muslims that they must vote to defeat the BJP. Why is it so? This is why they have become negative voters and we want to change that. We want to make them aware that the only party that can defeat the BJP at the Centre is Congress and not any regional party,” said Alam.

Another Congress minority department leader told The Indian Express that the party has been holding “quiet meetings” for a few months. “The idea behind these meetings is to invite people from across party affiliations. We don’t put up banners or give anyone the microphone because then it becomes an event. We want to keep them discreet, while also making sure that our message reaches to people cutting across classes and castes. Forty-five such small meetings have been held in eastern UP in the last month or so,” the leader said. “We will also start holding small meetings under the banner of ‘Chai ke saath, Congress ki baat’ where our focus will be to make people realise that only the Congress can save the Constitution and the secular nature of the country.”

In UP, Muslims have mostly voted for the Samajwadi Party (SP) over the last several years. This has been evident in the 2022 Assembly polls and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

However, the Congress leadership feels that the party can have an upper hand in the 2024 polls with its message that “only the Congress can work to defeat the BJP on the national stage,” given that SP is a regional party.

“The SP has always tried to get votes from the Muslim community, which has voted for the party in election after election. Despite that, the SP has not been able to defeat the BJP in 2017 and 2022 Assembly polls or in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. We feel if we put across the right message to the Muslim community, they will accept us,” said a senior Congress leader.

UP Congress president Ajay Rai claims that “minorities in the state are shifting to Congress”. “The Congress has never lost its credibility in the state or anywhere. We have never cheated the minority communities, like other parties. For instance, Muslims in western UP feel cheated at the moment, and they are shifting to the Congress and this has improved since Rahul (Gandhi) ji’s Bharat Jodo Yatra. Our minority department is working hard to ensure that Muslims feel safe in voting for the Congress,” said Rai.

Recently, senior Muslim leader in western UP, Imran Masood, returned to the Congress via the BSP and the SP, which is being seen as a shot in the arm for the grand old party.

The 2022 Assembly polls saw 111 SP MLAs getting elected in the 403-member House, of whom 32 were Muslim faces. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, of the five seats that the SP won out of 80 seats in the state, three were won by Muslim candidates – Azam Khan (Rampur), ST Hasan (Moradabad) and Shafiqur Rehman Barq (Sambhal). The other two seats were won by party founder late Mulayam Singh Yadav (Mainpuri) and president Akhilesh Yadav (Azamgarh – lost to the BJP later in a bypoll).

A section of Muslims is however perceived to have developed some resentment against the SP for “staying increasingly quiet on issues pertaining to the community”. Some within the SP also feel that the party is not vocal enough on “Muslim issues”, citing in this regard the “wrongful action against the tallest UP Muslim leader Azam Khan and his family”. While Akhilesh has spoken in support of the Azam family, many hoped for a “stronger response”.

A senior SP leader from the Muslim community however said, “Muslims may feel unhappy, but they know that Akhilesh ji is the only one who can defeat the BJP in UP. During SP government, we worked for the community and they haven’t forgotten that. We have to win elections and being vocal on every issue would not be prudent because it leads to polarisation. But we are 100 per cent confident that Muslims will vote for us like they always have. The Congress has no standing in UP.”