Muslims emerge as homogeneous entity backing INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh
The INDIA bloc’s Muslim candidates had a victory rate of 83 per cent in the Lok Sabha polls.
LUCKNOW: Muslim voters, who make up a considerable 19 per cent of the population in Uttar Pradesh and are a deciding factor in around a dozen Lok Sabha seats in the state, emerged as a homogenous entity consolidating in favour of the INDIA bloc in the 2024 polls.
The community stood so solidly behind the SP-Congress candidates that all the 20 Muslim candidates fielded by the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) lost, getting only a miniscule fraction of their votes.
The INDIA bloc’s Muslim candidates had a victory rate of 83 per cent in the Lok Sabha polls. All the four Muslim candidates fielded by the Samajwadi Party won, while one of the two Congress candidates emerged victorious.
Although the BJP leadership including PM Modi exhorted the Muslim community in the recently concluded election to vote keeping in mind the future of their generations, yet the community backed the Congress and SP combo.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, three of the six Muslims MPs who made it to Lok Sabha from UP — Danish Ali (Amroha), Afzal Ansari (Ghazipur) and Fazlur Rehman (Saharanpur) — were from the BSP.
Moreover, the INDIA bloc had fielded Muslim candidate strategically in constituencies with over 40 per cent Muslim electoral population except Ghazipur which has 27 per cent Muslim voters but with an added edge of being the bastion of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari. Afzal Ansari sailed through from the constituency as SP candidate this time.
The other Muslim candidates who won in the state are Imran Masood of the Congress from Saharanpur which has approximately 42 per cent Muslim voters, Mohibullah Nadvi of the SP from Rampur which has around 51 per cent Muslim voters (the highest in UP), Iqra Hasan of the SP from Kairana, her family bastion, with 40 per cent Muslim voters and Zia-ur-Rehman of the SP from Sambhal which has around 45 per cent Muslim voters.
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