The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), reeling under a series of high-profile exits, received a welcome boost to its 2017 campaign as four Opposition MLAs and a former BJP minister joined its ranks on Wednesday. Significantly, all four sitting MLAs belong to the Muslim community, which forms 19 per cent of the State’s electorate.
Riding on its core Dalit support base, the BSP hopes to cash in on the perceived disenchantment and insecurity of Muslims in U.P. under the Akhilesh Yadav government. Three of the four seats are in western U.P. The party is expected to field as many as 120-140 Muslim candidates in the 403-member Assembly, sources said, to woo the community.
The MLAs who joined the BSP are Nawab Kazim Ali Khan from Swar (Rampur), Dilnawaz Khan from Sayana (Bulandshahr), Nawazish Alam Khan from Budhana (Muzaffarnagar) and Mohammad Muslim Khan from Tiloi (Amethi).
While Nawazish Alam shifted ranks from the ruling Samajwadi Party, the other three were from the Congress — the party expelled them recently on charges of cross-voting in the recent Rajya Sabha elections.
Kazim Ali’s mother Begum Noor Bano is a senior Congress leader and former MP from Rampur, and a staunch opponent of SP stalwart Azam Khan. A four-time MLA, Kazim Ali was elected twice on a Congress ticket before he won with the BSP in 2007, even occupying a ministerial berth under the last Mayawati government, only to rejoin the Congress before the 2012 Assembly polls.
Muslim Khan is a two-time legislator from the Nehru-Gandhi pocket borough Amethi, also the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi. He has been critical of the Gandhi family and blamed its working style for the loss of the Congress’ “mass support”.
The new entrants are expected to get tickets from the BSP. The leaders said only the BSP could ensure the security of Muslims in UP and maintain law and order. Along with the four sitting MLAs, a former BJP minister Awadesh Kumar Verma also joined the BSP in the presence of Nasimuddin Siddique, party general secretary and top Mayawati aide, and Gaya Charan Dinkar, leader of Opposition in the Assembly.
