Uttar Pradesh elections 2017: In push for Muslim votes, BSP presents a young face

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Afzal heads a team of 12 divisional conveners, all Muslims and most aged below 40. They are interacting on the ground with voters in these assembly seats. Elsewhere, there are conveners for SC seats too, and most members of that bhaichara team too are youngsters.

The BSP believes younger Muslims are not as rigidly attached to other parties as elders are; they are hoping they will have been disenchanted because of communal tension during the Samajwadi Party government. At a rally in Lucknow Sunday, Mayawati had urged Muslims to vote for the BSP en bloc to stop the BJP, rather than “waste their votes” on the SP or the Congress.

“Younger Muslims are educated and understand the situation better. They understand what the BSP is offering them,” said former BSP MP Salim Ansari. “Most Muslims are upset with the SP. They also know their family dispute will damage them.”

Alam Rana, the Muslim Bhaichara’s Saharanpur division convener, said they have organised meetings in all the assembly seats of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Shamli with Afzal as chief guest. “The fact that he is young does help in connecting with the younger people. More youngsters come to his meetings. And in our teams in every assembly seat, at least 25 per cent are youngsters,” Rana said.

Afzal, the eldest of Naseemuddin Siddiqui’s three sons, had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Fatehpur, polling nearly 3 lakh votes while losing to the BJP’s Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti. His father remains one of Mayawati’s oldest, closest aides while his mother, Husna, was an MLC until January. Unlike the sons of other BSP leaders managed elections tickets in 2012 and 2014, Afzal is the only one who has been made part of the party’s organisation. In August, when Mayawati assigned responsibilities, she tasked him with wooing Muslims in western UP.

When Afzal was named Fatehpur candidate, he was yet to reach the age cutoff for the election. Then pursuing his LLB from Amity University in Noida, he turned 25 days before voting took place.

Afzal, who went to school in Dehradun, is married to Sanaa with a son, Umair. They live in Delhi and he also manages the family’s businesses in west UP, according to a source close to the family.

In 2012, his name cropped up when the UP Lokayukta indicted his parents for amassing assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. The Lokayukta report said that nearly half the land on which Afzal was running a meat factory in Amroha was under illegal possession.

Sources close to Afzal said he prefers to keep a distance from the media.

BSP MLC Mehmood Ali said any young leader working in the community sends an impression to community members. “Afzal’s campaign is sure to have an impact because of his hard work and also because he is the son of a senior party leader,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mayawati continued to target the Samajwadi Party, this time accusing it of turning the concept of socialism into that of nepotism and using it as a means to serve selfish interest. She asked the ruling party to introspect if it has reduced itself to being socialists just in name.

“Samajwadi Party and its government have narrowed down socialism into nepotism to serve selfish means and family interests, they need to introspect if they have not been reduced to socialists just in the name,” Mayawati said in a statement while congratulating people on the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan today.

“It is widely believed that the character, face and behaviour of SP has never been socialist and their thinking has always been casteist, guided by vendetta, which has never matched the teachings of JP, Ram Manohar Lohia,” she said. Reacting to the SP setting up a grand “samajwad museum”, inaugurated by Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav to commemorate JP’s anniversary, she said it was aimed at misleading people.

With PTI in Lucknow