A proactive voter in Azamgarh was on a call with this reporter. “The election is one-sided. There is a wave in favour of the Samajwadi Party (INDIA bloc) nominee. The BJP had won by accident in 2019.”
Fast forward an hour, the same voter tells this reporter: “I was sitting with an SP leader when I was speaking to you on the phone earlier, so said whatever he would like
to hear.
“But the truth is there is no wave in favour of anybody. The BJP nominee will win if they succeed in spreading rumours to terrorise the Hindu community and polarise them.”
Which way the Azamgarh result would go isn’t clear. But what appears clear is that the voters have stopped taking politicians seriously with polarisation gimmicks heavy in their speeches.
“The people are tricky this time because they fear the government agencies but they are not unclear about their political preferences,” Masiuddeen Sanjari, 55, an author and a resident of Sanjarpur in Azamgarh, said. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath both came here a few days ago and made vicious remarks but the voters didn’t discuss their statements the way they did in 2014 and 2019.”
Rakesh Pandey, another voter, suggested that the BJP had nothing new to woo the people with.
“The tricks used in past elections are useless this time and some politicians have failed to coin something new to win,” he said. “The people are silent because maybe police will knock on their doors or a bulldozer will demolish their houses,” he added referring to the Adityanath government claiming only houses of criminals are razed.
What about polarisation? Tariq Shafique, 35, said the Muslims never voted en bloc. “They are divided into different political camps. It is easy to polarise the poor and illiterate but the educated and well-off class always have a difference of opinion.
“BSP has fielded Mashood Ansari. He is not well-known but will still get some Muslim votes and damage INDIA’s prospects,” Shafique said.
Azamgarh has a 15 per cent Muslim population, a large section of which has gained affluence in recent decades thanks to remittances sent by family members working in West Asia.
However, at least two dozen youths from the district have been languishing in jails of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh for years, accused of terror links. The RSS and BJP used to dub Azamgarh as atangarh (terror land) and “nursery of terrorism” during the Congress and the SP reigns at the Centre and state, respectively. Political observers say the Prime Minister and chief minister still project the constituency in a bad light but sugarcoat it.
“Terrorists accused of explosions were pardoned. Sleeper cells were given the cover of politics. Due to this attitude, terrorism rose across the country,” Modi said in his rally in Azamgarh last week, attacking former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, whom he called SP’s “shehzade”.
Akhilesh won from Azamgarh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but resigned after winning Karhal in Mainpuri in the 2022 Assembly polls.
Azamgarh votes on May 25
