Lucknow: A rift within the Muslim leadership of the Samajwadi Party (SP) has come out in the open, with several party leaders filing nominations to contest the Lok Sabha election from two seats.
In Rampur, a loyalist of jailed SP leader Azam Khan filed his nomination Wednesday even as the party rushed in an imam of a Delhi-based mosque to file his nomination as the official candidate from the Muslim-dominated constituency.
And in neighbouring Moradabad, another Azam Khan loyalist dislodged the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) who had already filed his nomination as the SP candidate from the seat.
For decades, Rampur has been a bastion of Azam Khan, who was the sitting MP from the seat when, in 2022, he was convicted in a hate speech case and disqualified.
Party sources told ThePrint that some days ago, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav met Azam Khan in Sitapur jail. Akhilesh was considering his cousin Tej Pratap Singh Yadav as the Rampur candidate but it did not go down well with Azam Khan. Azam Khan, purportedly, kept pressuring Akhilesh to contest from Rampur, but the SP chief refused. Later, in a bid to placate Azam, the party chose a candidate from his camp to fight in Moradabad.
A day after a letter bearing Azam’s name revealed the Rampur unit was mulling whether it should boycott the election over Akhilesh refusing to be the Rampur candidate, the party Wednesday rushed in imam Mohibullah Nadvi to file his nomination from the seat.
“I have been sent by Akhilesh ji. Azam bhai is my ‘mukhtadi’ (follower of an imam during prayers), and I have read prayers for him, too,” Nadvi, the imam of the Jama Masjid on Delhi’s Parliament Street, told the media Wednesday.
Azam loyalist Asim Raja, who fought the Rampur by-poll after Azam’s disqualification but lost to the BJP, filed his nomination from Rampur earlier Wednesday. SP’s Abdul Salaam, former district panchayat president, had also rushed to the district collectorate with five supporters and filed his nomination from this seat.
In the neighbouring Moradabad seat, hours after sitting MP S.T. Hasan filed his nomination with forms A and B that the party gave him, SP’s Bijnor MLA Ruchi Vira reached Moradabad and did the same. “I have found out that another candidate has filed the nomination. The decision is for the high command to take. Only my party national president can answer what conditions led to this,” Hasan told the media in Moradabad Wednesday.
Hasan’s supporters expressed their disgruntlement by burning Vira’s effigy and calling her an “outsider”. They also alleged Vira was sent to Moradabad under pressure from Azam Khan.
On Thursday, the nomination forms of Asim Raja and Abdul Salaam in Rampur and S.T. Hasan in Moradabad were rejected by the returning officer. While the nomination forms of Asim and Abdul were cancelled because of the lack of forms A and B, Hasan’s nomination form was cancelled because the SP sent an official letter to the district officials, declaring Ruchi Vira as its Moradabad candidate.
A senior SP leader who did not wish to be named said two camps had developed within the SP’s Muslim leadership. “One camp is led by Rajya Sabha MP Javed Ali Khan, and the other by Azam Khan. Azam is the only prominent Muslim face of the SP from Rampur, but since his imprisonment, Muslim leaders have got close to Javed,” said the leader.
S.T. Hasan, once a leader of the Azam camp, had, of late, got close to Javed, said the leader. “When Azam found out that Nadvi would fight (from Rampur), he pressured the leadership to field one of his loyalists in Moradabad,” the leader added.
On Thursday, after the SP confirmed Vira’s nomination, Hasan hit out at Azam Khan, saying an “outsider conspired against him and imposed another outsider on Moradabad”.
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Azam “never let a parallel leadership develop” in Rampur
SP chief’s spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary Wednesday confirmed Nadvi as the official Rampur candidate. “The others may have filed their nominations, but they don’t have forms A and B (submitted on behalf of a political party to declare its official candidate),” he told ThePrint.
According to Chaudhary, since the Azam loyalists did not have the forms, their nominations, if not withdrawn, will be considered as filed by independents.
The SP went the extra mile to get Nadvi nominated. Sources said the party hired a chartered plane to fly in Uttar Pradesh SP chief Naresh Uttam Patel to hand over the A and B forms to Nadvi and ensure a smooth nomination.
Nadvi, a native of Rampur’s Swar tehsil, has served as imam of the Parliament Street Jama Masjid for 15 years. He belongs to the Turk Muslim community in Rampur. Now in his forties, Nadvi studied at Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow.
About why he decided to join politics, Nadvi said at times, conditions develop when one has to be ready for service of the nation. He also said the country is now witnessing a division, and God has chosen Rampur to end the same.
About Azam’s loyalist Asim filing his nomination, the unnamed SP leader quoted earlier said Azam wanted to send a message to the public that Maulana Nadvi was not his candidate.
“Azam never let a parallel leadership develop in Rampur… He knows that his loyalist’s nomination would have been rejected but wanted to send a message to Rampur’s public that Maulana Nadvi is not the candidate of his choice.”
Javed Ali Khan Wednesday expressed his unease over the events in Moradabad via a cryptic post on X which has since been deleted. It read: “Even in the times of the nawabs, Moradabad was never enslaved by Rampur. It has been today!”
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Azam’s “wish prevailed” in Moradabad
In Moradabad, S.T. Hasan has been elected MP twice, in 2014 and 2019. Declared the party candidate for the third time, he filed his nomination Tuesday with forms A and B that the party gave him.
The woman who dislodged him, Ruchi Vira, was elected an MLA from Bijnor on an SP ticket in a 2014 by-election but defected to the BSP later. The seat went to the BSP when the SP-BSP coalition was fighting the 2019 general elections. At the time, she fought from the Aonla Lok Sabha seat on a BSP ticket but lost.
Kausar Hayat Khan, national joint secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), part of the INDIA bloc, told ThePrint that Vira arrived at Moradabad late Tuesday night.
“S.T. Hasan was hopeful of fighting the election till 1 pm on Wednesday because the SP leadership was in his favour. However, Azam’s wish prevailed, and Vira has been fielded in his place,” he said.
Hayat was one of the Muslim leaders whom Vira met during her Moradabad visit.
“When the party had already given the ticket to me, there was no reason to deny the same,” Hasan told the media Wednesday.
However, he added it was also clear that Vira received the SP leadership’s nod since she “brought the nomination form with her and filed the same”.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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