Kalyan effect: SP in search of a ‘credible’ Muslim face

In a damage control exercise,the party appointed Waqar Ahmed Shah,a four-time MLA,as the deputy leader of the SP in the state assembly in place of Khan to assuage the sentiments of minorities who are getting closer to Congress as reflected in the outcome of the just concluded Lok Sabha polls.

The Samajwadi Party which had won 35 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP in 2004 had to rest content with 23 seats this time,while Congress improved its tally from nine in 2004 to 21 now.

To fill the vacuum,the party appointed Ahmed Hasan as the leader of the opposition in the Vidhan Parishad but he is not considered as a leader with mass support.

Party sources said SP would be looking forward to leaders like Zafar Alam,who unsuccessfully contested Aligarh Lok Sabha seat but polled almost 90 per cent Muslim votes,besides MLAs Mehboob Ali,Iqbal Mehmood and Shahid Manzoor who lost in the Lok Sabha polls to fill the gap.

The party which was once considered to be the first choice among the minorities was taken by surprise in the Lok Sabha polls as all its 11 Muslims candidates lost.

The problem for SP started when prominent Muslim leaders like Salim Shervani,Shaifq-ur-Rehman Burq,Shahid Siddiqui and Haji Akhlaq quit the party — some of them on the pretext of it favouring the Indo-US Nuclear deal.

“Though some of them made the N-deal an issue,they left after denial of party tickets for Lok Sabha seats of their choice,” party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said.

On the Azam Khan issue,he said it would be wrong to describe him as the leader of minorities.

Had he been so,SP candidate Jaya Prada would not have won from Khan’s home turf Rampur,which has a sizeable Muslim population,he said. Khan,an SP MLA from Rampur,had openly opposed her.

“The SP victory in Rampur has shown that Khan is a mere local level leader and the minorities are very much with SP because of its programmes and policies and especially the leadership of Mulayam Singh Yadav,” Chaudhary said.

Referring to other Muslim leaders who had quit the party,he said they were hardly leaders. They were mere followers of Yadav whose priorities have always been uplift of minorities,he said,adding there was no shortage of Muslim faces as the minority community has always backed SP.