Rampur bypoll to witness BJP's big Pasmanda outreach

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, November 29

After pulling off major upsets by wresting the Rampur and Azamgarh parliamentary constituencies from the Samajwadi Party (SP) earlier this year, the ruling BJP is going all out to bag the Rampur seat in the Assembly byelection due on December 5 alongside the Mainpuri Lok Sabha bypoll.

A major part of the saffron strategy in the Rampur seat, which the now-convicted SP strongman Azam Khan has held for a record 10 terms, is targeted to reach out to backward Pasmanda Muslims, estimated to constitute 85 per cent of the Muslims nationally and over half the Muslim voters in the Rampur Assembly segment.

A Pasmanda push reaped some benefit for the saffron party in the June Rampur byelection when it improved the vote share by 15 per cent over the March Assembly results. The BJP’s vote percentage in the Rampur LS bypoll was 52 per cent as against 37 per cent at the time of the Assembly elections in which the party won two of the five Assembly seats in the Rampur parliamentary segment. Having consolidated its position among OBCs and Dalits in the state, the BJP is expecting Pasmanda engagement to help it pull off another upset in the Rampur Assembly bypoll, where Azam Khan’s confidant Asim Raza of the SP is pitted against BJP’s Akash Saxena.

The party, is it learnt, also plans to field Pasmanda candidates in Muslim-dominated wards in the UP civic body elections due between December and January. The plan is to give Pasmanda faces in these areas where the BJP has never marked a presence.

Bid to woo community

• BJP’s Pasmanda Muslim outreach gained momentum after PM Narendra Modi’s meeting this July called upon cadres to reach out to deprived sections among Muslims
• The party, however, started appointing community leaders to key positions even before July
• Danish Ansari was named a minister in UP; Iftikhar Jawed was appointed chief of the UP Pradesh Board of Madrassa Education, and Chaudhary Kaif-ul-Wara was made UP Urdu Akademi chairperson