UP Election Results: Azamgarh rejects Congress’ double-speak

Double speak does not work. That is Azamgarh’s message to Congress party and particularly Rahul Gandhi, who stayed overnight in the district’s Shibli National Postgraduate College, to woo the Muslim community. Trends show that Samajwadi Party is leading in nine out of ten assembly constituencies in Azamgarh district. This is five more seats than what SP won in the district in 2007 assembly elections. The only exception is Shah Aalam of BSP, who is leading in Mubarakpur constituency, dominated by the weaver community. In Azamgarh, the main fight was between Congress and SP. [caption id=“attachment_235700” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Congress sympathised with the community but fell short of supporting a judicial probe for the encounter. AFP”]  [/caption] Atif Amin and Mohammad Sajid, allegedly killed in an encounter in South Delhi’s Batla House, hailed from Azamgarh. Since the encounter of September 2008, police has been regularly hauling young boys from Azamgarh living in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Currently, 16 boys of the district are languishing in prisons across the country, on charges of harbouring terrorism. In the last two months, residents of Batla House, Delhi, have held many demonstrations against what they call ‘profiling’ of the Muslim community. For 2012 assembly elections, star campaigners of all major parties including Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh visited Azamgarh garnering support of Muslims — 18 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s vote bank. Congress sympathised with the community but fell short of supporting a judicial probe for the encounter. The only party which was articulate for such probe was SP. The party even mentioned justice for Azamgarh’s innocent youth, in its poll manifesto. While Mayawati’s BSP kept mum on the issue, BJP opposed judicial probe. When Firstpost team visited Azamgarh during the second phase of assembly polls, it discovered that the results would be tilted in favour of SP. “Honestly, there is no party which thinks for the welfare of Muslims. But we consider SP less harmful than BSP,” Mahisuddin Sanjari, social activist from Sanjarpur village told Firstpost. The fact that despite being at the Centre, Congress did nothing to bring justice to Azamgarh citizens shifted a sizeable chunk of vote- bank in the district to SP. Numerous fringe parties including the Welfare Party, were trying to cut the Muslim vote analysing that the community was angry with the Congress. But at the end, Mullah Mulayam has the last laugh in Azamgarh and rest of Uttar Pradesh, as the trends show.