Minority pockets tilt to Cong

SANJAY K. JHA

Bareilly, Dec. 16: Large sections of Muslim voters, who can swing the results in about 130 of the 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, seem inclined towards the Congress in a trend that should worry the Samajwadi Party, interactions during a road trip spread over the past few days suggest.

The community's intelligentsia and clerics may still be debating options but ordinary Muslims in the villages and towns expressed dislike for the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and disappointment with the Samajwadi Party.

A division in Muslim votes will hurt the Samajwadis, who had received almost 45 per cent of the community's votes in the last Assembly elections, and indirectly boost the BSP, which has a strong Dalit base.

The Congress, which polled just over 10 per cent of Muslim votes in 2007, will gain but would be unlikely to emerge as the clear winner. Most observers, therefore, feel that the state may be headed for a hung Assembly, although the poll dates have not been announced yet.

Many Muslims this correspondent met in central and western Uttar Pradesh said the Congress was a better option than the Samajwadis. In Badayun, Mulayam Singh Yadav's stronghold, Muslims said there was sympathy for the Samajwadis but added that most people in the community were looking up to the Congress "for a change".

Several Muslims, especially the youth, said the community had received little from the Samajwadis. They see the Congress as a "party of development". The talk of a sub-quota for backward Muslims within the 27 per cent OBC quota has generated excitement, too.

Some Muslims spoke of the recent economic package for weavers, the targeted central schemes for the minorities and the rural job scheme as points in favour of the Congress — suggesting that sections of the population do take note of such programmes.

They accused the Mayawati government of working only for "unke log (their people)". The reference is to Jatavs — not the entire Dalit community — who have gained during her rule.

A group of Muslims in Faridpur contended that supporting the Congress would be "economically more gainful".

An elderly man, who said most of his fellow villagers had supported the Samajwadis earlier, said: "Public ka dimaag ghuma hua hai is bar (people's minds have changed this time)." He said the anger against the Congress following the Babri demolition had subsided.

At Rasoolpur in Badayun, a group of Muslims said there was no harm trying out the Congress as it appeared better than the rest in terms of development.

Asked how they would vote if a last-minute fatwa favoured Samajwadis, young men asserted nobody could "change the public mind this time".

"What have we achieved in the last two decades by keeping the Congress out of power?" a Muslim businessman in Shahjahanpur said. "We are almost ashamed to reveal that we belong to Uttar Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi is rightly raising the issue of distress migration."