Lucknow:
Only six Muslim candidates have made it to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, a state where the community forms nearly 20 per cent of the population.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, no Muslim was elected to the House from the state. However, RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan had won a parliamentary bypoll later.
Those who have made it to the Lok Sabha this time are SP’s Azam Khan (Rampur), ST Hasan (Moradabad) and SR Burq (Sambhal) and BSP’s Afzal Ansari (Ghazipur), Danish Ali (Amroha) and Fazlur Rehman (Saharanpur).
The BJP did not give the Lok Sabha ticket to any Muslim this time too.
Barring the father-son duo of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav, it was SP’s Muslim nominees who took the party’s tally to five.
The SP and the BSP had fielded four and six Muslim candidates, respectively.
Til the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Muslims played a crucial role in 30-odd constituencies, primarily in the western and central UP.
They accounted for 15-50 per cent of votes in the constituencies.
In the 2014 polls, the BJP and its ally Apna Dal alliance had bagged 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats, including Moradabad, Rampur and Saharanpur, where Muslim voters considered as a decisive factor.
Moradabad has 41.12 per cent Muslim voters while their number is 50.57 per cent and 41.95 per cent in Rampur and Saharanpur, respectively.
Tabassum Hasan was the only Muslim candidate chosen for the Lok Sabha from Kairana in the 2018 byelections.
In all, 54 Muslim candidates had contested the polls in 2014. The SP had fielded 12, BSP and Congress 17 and 11, respectively.
