SPECIAL REPORT “This is Azamgarh. Anything can happen,” says Tariq Shafique, a social activist from Sanjarpur, talking about Samajwadi party chief Mulayam Singh’s chances of winning the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat. Sanjarpur village has come to be forever linked in the public mind with the controversial Batla House encounter. The two alleged terrorists that were killed in the 2008 shoot-out in Delhi belonged to this village.
Mulayam Singh’s decision to contest from Azamgarh has created sharp divisions in the Muslim community over which party to back in the crucial Lok Sabha polls which has seen Narendra Modi, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, become the dominant issue dictating voter preferences.
In the 2012 assembly polls, Samajwadi Party was the unanimous choice of the Muslim community. Its backing helped the party win 9 out of the ten assembly seats in Azamgarh. Without the solid backing of the Muslim community, which comprises 14 per cent of Azamgarh’s electorate, Mulayam Singh who is banking on the Mulsim-Yadav combine cannot win.
But worryingly for SP chief the last two years of the Samajwadi Party government and its betrayal of the community on crucial issues, not to mention its failure to contain the riots in Muzaffanagar, has angered a large section of Azamgarh's Muslim community.
Seething with anger and determined to see the SP chief defeated, they are rallying behind the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) candidate Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali, who they believe with his assured base vote of the Dalits, could defeat the BJP. Jamali, popular for his reputation for helping the poor, was the lone BSP MLA to win an assembly constituency in Azamgarh in 2012.
Unimpressed by Mulayam Singh’s decision to contest from Azamgarh, Mohammad Ahmed, who runs a grocery store in Sanjarpur, says, "If he really wanted to fight the BJP, he should have fought from Banaras against Modi. He says he wants to defeat the BJP but then he put up a weak candidate in Lucknow against Rajnath Singh. That means the SP has some understanding with the BJP. In Muzaffarnagar riots too, they had an understanding. You cannot be in government and blame someone else."
Many see the SP chief’s decision to contest from Azamgarh as a mere ploy to prevent the Yadav vote in Eastern Uttar Pradesh from falling under the influence of Modi, who is contesting from the nearby district of Varanasi. Umairus Siddique Nadvi, a senior research fellow at Azamgarh’s well-known Shibli Academy, says “With the coming of Modi to Banaras, Mulayam Singh wanted to ensure that the Eastern Uttar Pradesh districts that are Yadav strongholds are not influenced by the Modi’s campaign.
He is here only to keep his traditional vote-bank from abandoning him. If that slips, the BSP or the BJP can take advantage of it. You see, if he fails to hold on to the Yadav vote, he will also lose the Muslim vote. And if that happens, he will lose Uttar Pradesh forever.”
Could this election turn out to be an existential test for the Samajwadi Party? The large Yadav clan – Mulayam Singh’s brothers, his nephews and son, the chief minister - have descended on Azamgarh backed by the full might of the party machinery to the ensure the party supremo makes it past the post with a respectable margin.
Mulayam Singh is contesting from two seats in this Lok Sabha election. The first one being his traditional seat Mainpuri. The desperation of the Samajwadi Party is not lost on voters. “Mulayam Singh’s name alone should have been enough to ensure the victory for the party. But that is not happening. Party heavyweights are having to rough it out in the field,” observes Shahid Badr Falahi, a Unani doctor. Falahi is former president of Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which was banned by the NDA government in 2001 and continues to be banned by the UPA government.
Falahi sees the election in Azamgarh as being a contest between the SP and BSP. “Azamgarh’s Muslims are very angry with Mulayam Singh. But that doesn’t mean they are happy with Mayawati either. If the graph of the voters who are angry with Mulayam Singh is higher, the BSP will get more votes…But the general feeling among people is that they would rather vote for a new comer than vote for Mulayam Singh,” says Falahi.
Anger against the SP government in Azamgarh is not limited to its failure to prevent the Muzaffarnagar riots. It also has to do with the failure of the party to meet the promises it had made to win the Muslim community’s support ahead of the assembly elections. Speaking about one of the two key promises Mulayam Singh had made ahead of the assembly polls, Falahi says, “The manifesto had promised that the youth who have been falsely implicated in terror cases would be released and given compensation and jobs.
People were very taken up with this. Even old women who had no interest in politics came out to vote for SP in the hope that their children would be released. But so far not a single youth has been released. The same promises have now been repeated. No one is ready to believe him this time.”
Also fresh in the mind of Azamgarh’s Mulsim community is the public pressure that had to be built up before the SP government finally tabled the R D Nimesh Commission report which raised serious doubts about the claims made by the police about the circumstances under which Khalid Mujahid and Hakim Tariq were arrested in 2007. The Nimesh commission had been up by the Mayawati government to inquire into the arrest of Mujahid and Tariq for their alleged involvement in the 2007 UP blasts.
“For 121 days people sat in protest outside the Vidhan Sabha. It was only then that the SP government tabled it. And despite the cabinet accepting the report, no action has been taken so far…Mulayam Singh only talks about Muslim issues on the streets but he does nothing in places where it matters, in places where laws are made,” says Shafique, a Sanjarpur-based activist.
But Sanjarpur also has its share of Samajwadi Party supporters who swear by Mulayam Singh and his son Akhilesh. Among them are students who’ve benefitted from the SP government’s free laptop scheme. Nisar Ahmed, a masters student says, “If Azamgarh has a name today, it is because of Mulayam and Akhilesh. If anyone has laid a brick for the development of Azamgarh, it is the Samajwadi Party. Mulayam has announced an agricultural university in Azamgarh.
We gave SP nine seats in assembly. Inshallah, Mulayam will win from Azamgarh.” When asked about SP government’s record of communal riots (the worst of which was the Muzaffarnagar riots) and its failure to deliver on his promise of taking action in cases where innocent youth were accused of being terrorists, his supporters say he should be given more time. Mohammad Tariq, a B.com final year student says, “First of all, what happened in Muzaffarnagar is very shameful.
And we condemn it. As for his promises, he still has two-and-a-half years to deliver...In this election the Muslim voter has to look at who can defeat the communal forces. While Guddu Jamali (BSP candidate) is a strong candidate, majority of the Muslims are looking at supporting the SP in Azamgarh.” Also playing on the mind of voters is the outcome of the 2009 election, when a division of the Mulsim vote resulted in a surprise win for the BJP.
“Modi has made people realise that if we don’t unite, results can go awry like it happened in 2009. The Ulama Council fielded a candidate, the Muslim vote got divided and the losing candidate won,” says a retired block development officer Mohammad Rafi. Rafi says the anger against the SP government has subsided after Mulayam Singh decided to contest from Azamgarh.
“There was anger against Mulayam Singh after the Muzaffarnagar riots. But after he decided to contest from Azamgarh that anger has subsided. What will we gain from being angry? Development has to happen. And if Mulayam wins, development can happen,” he says.
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