There are no marigold garlands heaped on top of Samajwadi Party (SP) nominee Afzal Ansari’s vehicle – the distinguishing mark of an election candidate. The cavalcade of three SUVs and a few young men on motorcycles threads through the narrow roads in Ghazipur’s interior villages, almost noiselessly.
Mr. Ansari has had an itinerant political journey. Associated with the Communist Party of India early on, he won this Lok Sabha seat on an SP ticket in 2004. In 2019, he won Ghazipur again after having shifted to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in an election where the party and the SP had joined hands.
But this election is not about him. The shadow of his younger brother, five-time U.P. legislator Mukhtar Ansari who died on March 28 in Banda jail, looms large. Then there is the pending judgment in a nearly two-decade-old case linked to the killing of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai. The more immediate challenge is of holding on to Dalit voters after returning to SP from BSP.
Stump speech
Around 2 p.m., the cavalcade stops at Harsingh Patti village. At a small clearing inside the village predominantly of Rajbhars, an OBC group that had significantly shifted to the BJP after 2014, is Mr. Ansari’s first public meeting of the day.
He delivers a-35 minute speech in front of 200-odd people, who hang on to every word as he switches between Hindi and Bhojpuri, building his narrative from Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement of 2012 to the BJP’s promise of 2 crore jobs annually before the 2014 general election. He details “fanciful decisions” taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from demonetisation to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the high rate of inflation and unemployment. He also asks the crowd whether they doubt the EVM – the audience hisses in affirmative.
It is only towards the end that Mr. Ansari speaks about his brother: “Have you heard the name of my younger brother Mukhtar Ansari?” They say yes, in a chorus. He alleges that Mukhtar was poisoned to death by the authorities to break apart his family “like they did with Sharad Pawar’s”.
“Make sure you vote in record numbers, so that it is clear to them that the Ghazipur voter is openly revolting against them,” he signs off.
In April 2023, Mr. Ansari was disqualified as an MP after his conviction by a special court under U.P. Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act for Rai’s 2005 murder, a case he claims was foisted on him despite his acquittal in the main murder case. His membership was restored by the Supreme Court, which stayed the conviction. The case is now pending before the Allahabad High Court.
“This case has been resurrected as part of a BJP game plan. You can intimidate the voters but can’t win their hearts. BJP will not get even half a vote here,” he says.
Constituency configuration
As the electoral caravan heads to Ghazipur in the seventh phase of polls on June 1, Mr. Ansari fancies an opening edge in terms of the Yadavs and Muslims constituting the dominant bloc among voters here. The SP also holds four out of the five Assembly segments under this seat, two of which it had wrested back from the BJP in the 2022 Assembly elections; one is with O.P. Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party.
In 2019, Mr. Ansari had defeated current J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha – an opponent he had bested in 2004 as well – by a margin of over 1.19 lakh votes, on the back of support from the Dalit and Muslim voters. He squares up this time against BJP candidate Paras Nath Rai, an old associate of Mr. Sinha, and BSP’s Umesh Kumar Singh.
Mr. Ansari had even got his daughter Nusrat Ansari to file her nomination as an Independent to cover for the possibility of disqualification. While that scare has passed, whether his switch to the SP is a hit hinges on how much of the roughly 20% Dalit voters in the constituency he manages to retain.
