Lok Sabha elections: Is UP's Pasmanda population warming up to BJP?

PM Modi accused SP and Congress of ignoring the plight of Pasmanda Muslims, a section of minority community which BJP has been trying to woo for some time now

“When I talk about the woes of Pasmanda Muslims, they (the Congress and Samajwadi Party) get goosebumps,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed during an election rally in Aligarh on Monday.

PM Modi accused both the parties of ignoring the plight of Pasmanda Muslims, a section of minority community which BJP has been trying to woo for some time now. The saffron party has also launched several outreach programmes in that direction.

But is the tide turning? All depends on which side you are on.

‘Pasmanda’, which is a Persian word meaning “those left behind”, is an umbrella term for OBC and Dalit Muslims. They form about 85 per cent of the minority community in Uttar Pradesh.

Given their large numbers, the ruling BJP has been trying to wean them away from the Congress and Samajwadi Party (SP).

But the INDIA alliance -- of which Congress and SP are key players -- refuses to believe that BJP has made a dent in their traditional vote bank.

A leader says that the BJP has not fielded a single Muslim candidate, let alone a Pasmanda in the Lok Sabha polls.

Pasmanda leaders have long complained about their poor political representation, blaming the “secular parties” for picking members of the Muslim elite to give political representation, he said.

Something PM Modi alluded to in the Aligarh rally when he said that the upper (caste) people have skimmed all benefits and they (Congress and SP) have forced Pasmandas to live in the same condition.

Over the past few years, the BJP worked on this faultline, with Prime Minister Modi urging party workers to undertake ‘sneh yatras’ to express the party’s kindness and fellow feeling for the Pasmandas.

In the local body elections in 2023, the BJP fielded several Pasmanda candidates, many of whom won. Last year, the BJP also launched a ‘Modi Mitra’ campaign to reach out to Pasmanda and Sufi Muslims. 

In 2022, after winning the Assembly polls in UP, the Yogi Adityanath government picked Danish Azad Ansari, a Pasmanda Muslim, as the UP minister of state for minority welfare and Waqf.

Ansari replaced Mohsin Raza, an upper-caste Shia, who was the minister of state in the previous Yogi Adityanath government.

Muslims comprise 19-20 per cent of UP’s 200 million population.

According to Basit Ali, the UP BJP’s minority wing chairman, 40 million Muslims have benefitted from the government-funded welfare schemes in the state for housing, domestic cooking gas, electricity, rations, and other social security measures.  

Ali claimed Muslims were more amenable to supporting the BJP owing to the welfare schemes.

“Muslims are keen to shun the stereotype of being treated as the vote bank of so-called secular parties. The minority community, including Pasmandas, is increasingly rallying around with the BJP in the LS polls,” he told Business Standard.

The Pasmanda leadership has pointed out that the SP and Congress claim to champion the cause of their community but rarely field Pasmanda candidates in elections.

Recently, ‘All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz’ national vice president Waseem Raeen claimed that the UP poll results would spring surprises on parties taking the Muslim electorate for granted.

However, Samajwadi Party leader Sudhir Panwar rejected any suggestion of a shift in the voting pattern of Muslims or the Pasmandas.

“The minority community will vote en bloc to the INDIA alliance candidates...the issue of Pasmanda and non-Pasmanda does not cut any ice with the community,” he said, while seeking to know how many Muslim candidates were fielded by the BJP in UP.

Political observers also point out that there is no Muslim minister in the Union cabinet.

The central government also discontinued the ‘Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’ scholarship for higher education, whose beneficiaries were the students of Pasmanda community.

However, socio-political commentator and former Congress leader Zishan Haider observed it was for the first time that the Pasmandas seem to be warming up to the BJP.

“While a section of the Shia Muslims has been voting for the BJP, the marginalised sections of the minorities are now showing support for the saffron outfit,” he said.