Lucknow: Following the suspension of Danish Ali, Lok Sabha MP from Amroha, by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in December, concerns have risen among the veteran members of the party — which gave its worst performance in the 2022 assembly polls, winning just one seat — that it might suffer further setbacks in the upcoming general elections.
Over the past six years, several Muslim leaders have exited the BSP, starting with Nasimuddin Siddiqui — who earned himself the moniker “mini-CM” during the BSP rule in the state — and his son Afzal Siddiqui being expelled from the party in May 2017. In the assembly elections that year, the BSP had won only 19 seats and the BJP had stormed to power in the state.
In August last year, former Muzaffarabad MLA Imran Masood was expelled by the BSP for alleged “indiscipline and anti-party activities”. Prior to his expulsion, Masood had been in the news for showering praises on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
The party’s Ghazipur MP Afzal Ansari was disqualified from the post after his conviction in a gangster act case in May last year. Ansari was sentenced to four years imprisonment but was released on bail in July 2023. While the Supreme Court suspended Ansari’s conviction earlier this month, it remains to be seen whether the BSP will field him from the seat again in the backdrop of the party’s denial of candidature to slain gangster Atiq’s Ahmed’s wife Shaista Parveen in the mayoral polls.
In the aftermath of the killing of BJP leader and lawyer Umesh Pal, allegedly by Atiq’s son Asad Ahmed and his associates in February last year, Mayawati had commented that she will not give a ticket to Atiq’s wife or any other member of his family and that the “BSP respects law.”
Speaking to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, a senior BSP leader acknowledged that with several Muslim leaders gone, the party does not have a second line of leadership.
“However, in BSP, there has always been only one leadership at the top, the rest all are workers,” the leader said.
Now, Danish Ali appears to be signaling an inclination towards the Congress, while Imran Masood has switched to the Congress already.
In September last year, Ali had met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after the BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri made objectionable remarks against him in the Parliament. Following the meeting, Gandhi had posted a photograph of the two sharing a hug. “A shop of love in the market of hatred”, he posted on X.
Moreover, Ali has pitched for Opposition unity, which he described as “more necessary than ever before”.
Ali is not alone. Others within the BSP feel that the Muslim community is looking towards Congress and the party needs to enter the INDIA alliance to ensure that it can perform well in the coming polls.
“It is true that the Muslims are looking at the Congress which is a bigger party. When we did not enter an alliance in the 2014 general elections, we got not a single seat and when we did ally in 2019 polls, we won 10 seats. The party needs to ensure that we enter into an alliance with the INDIA bloc to ensure we perform well. If we keep removing leaders from the party, who will fight,” BSP’s former national spokesperson Dharamveer Chaudhary told ThePrint.
Political experts feel that the ouster of Muslim leaders from the party will greatly harm the party’s prospects in the state.
“The BSP has always won in the state with a combination of Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins voting for the party but it been continuously losing the trust of the Dalits in the state too, especially the non-Jatav voters and SCs like the Pasis and Valmiki community, where the BJP has made deep inroads,” Shashikant Pandey, head of department of political science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar university told ThePrint.
“The BSP has been losing its support base among Muslims too. The Muslims have been steadily voting for the SP in the past elections.”
However, when questioned about the ouster of Siddiqui and Masood from the party and now the suspension of Danish Ali, a Rajya Sabha member from the BSP refuted the claims that the ouster of Masood and Ali would harm the BSP.
“They have emerged as leaders from the nursery of the BSP. Their ouster does not make any difference on ground because they won only when the BSP’s core voter voted for them. Ali was a JD(S) leader who was brought to UP by behenji as part of an understanding with that party,” the leader said.
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‘BSP may face trouble in Muslim areas’
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, three Muslim candidates from the BSP had won the elections from Ghazipur (Afzal Ansari), Amroha (Danish Ali) and Saharanpur (Fazlur Rehman). However, the party had lost its mayoral seats — Aligarh and Meerut — in the municipal polls held last year. Both the seats have a sizeable Muslim population. It had also lost the Saharanpur mayoral seat to the BJP which was the only seat where it gave the ruling party a tough fight.
Pandey said that when leaders are given a platform by a party, they develop a support base of their own and their ouster sends a bad message within the community.
“The minority community tends to have an insecurity in its minds and when they see their leaders speak on television and social media, they tend to identify them as heroes. When such leaders are dropped by the party, it sends a bad message among the community,” he said, adding that the BSP may face trouble in the Muslim dominated seats in the coming Lok Sabha polls.
Congress’s Muslim outreach in UP
Meanwhile, the Congress is aiming to broaden its influence in the state that contributes the majority of MPs to the country’s Parliament and is actively seeking to win over the Muslim community, which constitutes approximately 20 percent of the state’s population.
This effort comes amid talks of a potential alliance between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP).
The Congress, which launched its ‘UP Jodo Yatra’ from Saharanpur last month, is touching several Muslim dominated Lok Sabha seats as part of its yatra. These include Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Amroha, Moradabad, Rampur and Bareilly of the western UP region.
Speaking to ThePrint, UP Congress’ minority department chief Shahnawaz Alam said that in the past, the Congress has won in UP when the farmers, Muslims and Jats put their trust in the party. Alam admitted that the Congress’s Muslim outreach is especially notable in the western UP region.
“In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress won on several seats which are dominated by Muslims. Our strategy is to remind people that we have always worked for farmers and minorities,” he said.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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