Will the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh ever again be taken for granted by SP?

Imam Isa Ali was busy counseling people at the seventeenth-century Jama Masjid on the significance of marriage and its customs. However, he spent the most time discussing the drawbacks of extravagant weddings and dowries.

“The main issue is this. Girls in the community who turn thirty still don’t have husbands. Fathers worry about when and how to marry off their second daughter after marrying off their first, according to Imam Isa Ali, a Deoband graduate who moved to this mosque in 1988 after being encouraged by the community to relocate from a neighboring hamlet.

In order to prepare for the problems of the contemporary world, the community is reflecting at a time when its vote has become “irrelevant” for the BJP, which is in power in both UP and the central government. Regarding the elections, the Muslims in this area, who outnumber those in other groups in Najibabad and the surrounding towns of Chandpur, Nehtaur, Noorpur, etc., have made up their minds despite the siren song of a new Dalit leader named Chandrashekhar, also known as Ravan.

There was no problem among the Muslim voters in western Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which will be held on April 19. The voters are evenly distributed among the nine seats. Their choice of Samajwadi Party-BSP-Jayant Chowdhary’s RLD was a pragmatic one. Girish Chandra, the joint BSP candidate, won the Nagina seat with a substantial 1.67 lakh votes. After he vanished from sight during the CAA demonstrations, Javed Mateen recounts, “But we had to steel our hearts to vote for SP’s Tasleem Ahmed three years later.” Is Chandrashekhar a preferable choice? Not Owaisi’s AIMIM, then? Javed says there are plenty of volunteers for Chandrashekhar, as the assembled audience seems to nod in unison.

However, they consistently respond that Chandrashekhar is somewhere else when we ask them where he is. That is also our point. He makes the observation that “one man without a party structure cannot achieve much,” thus implying that the SP-Congress partnership is widely preferred. However, as one old lady points out, this could be the last time the SP can ignore the Muslim vote. “We are with the SP because of Rahul Gandhi’s perspective on our issues,” she explains.