Lucknow: Addressing one of her campaign meetings earlier this month, Naseem Solanki, Samajwadi Party’s candidate in the byelection to Uttar Pradesh’s Sishamau and wife of Irfan Solanki—the jailed former MLA of the constituency—broke down as she said, “I am tired now. This will be my last fight.”
On Saturday, Naseem won the bypoll by a margin of 8,564 votes, defeating Bharatiya Janata Party’s Suresh Awasthi.
According to political experts, the influence of her husband—convicted in June in an arson case—in Sishamau and the ‘sympathy factor’ purportedly worked in her favour, helping her register a win in the Muslim-dominated constituency, which her husband had held ever since it was created in 2012 after a delimitation exercise.
She was nominated in October as a candidate by the Samajwadi Party for the bypoll to the Sisamau seat, which had fallen vacant after Irfan’s disqualification as the MLA due to his conviction. He has been in jail since December 2022. Over the past two years, Naseem was seen paying multiple visits to police stations and courts, and making statements in connection with her husband’s arrest.
Sishamau has almost 1.1 lakh Muslim voters, with Brahmin voters forming the next biggest chunk of voters, followed by Dalits and other backward classes, according to the local SP unit. The constituency also has a sizable share of Kayastha, Sindhi-Punjabi and Rajput voters.
Shashikant Pandey, former head of the Political Science department at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), told ThePrint that the fact that Irfan managed to get his wife the party ticket reflects his hold on the voters of the constituency.
“SP-Congress did not do well in other seats in Uttar Pradesh, but the alliance worked well in Sishamau. Irfan’s connection with the voters at grassroot level reflects in the result. Apart from the fact that the seat is minority-dominated, the sympathy factor for the candidate cannot be ruled out,” he said.
“Under this regime, where several cases have been registered against Irfan, his voters would have felt that he was being targeted, leading to the consolidation of support in his wife’s favour, especially since he is not a history-sheeter. His transfer to a distant jail or the number of cases against him would have sent a certain message to his voters.”
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Who are Irfan & Naseem Solanki?
Irfan has had at least 12 cases lodged against him since 2020, for which he is facing trial. In 2022, he had to surrender before the court in connection with a case lodged by a woman, who had accused the former MLA, his brother Rizwan, and several others, of arson, assault, causing harm, and threatening to kill.
A woman called Nazir Fatima had alleged that her house in the Jajmau area of Kanpur had been set on fire on 7 November, 2022 by Irfan and others, in an attempt to grab her land. He and the others were convicted in the case in June this year.
Irfan had attracted several FIRs even before the arson case, but most of them did not result in a conviction. In June 2011, he, along with others, had been booked for misbehaving with an IAS officer, Ritu Maheshwari, resulting in a clash between police and his supporters, for which he had apologised later.
In May 2012, he was stopped by Faridabad Traffic Police for travelling in a car with tinted glass windows, upon which his associates had attempted to beat up the cops.
In February 2014, he and his associates had allegedly severely assaulted some junior doctors in Kanpur after a minor traffic accident near the GSVM Medical College, which was followed by some police officers allegedly barging into the medical college and assaulting the students which had left many injured. The incident had sparked widespread protests against the police action across the medical fraternity of India.
In the election affidavit that he had filed for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Irfan had mentioned three pending cases against him in Chamanganj, Anwarganj and Colonelganj police stations of Kanpur, two of which pertained to violation of COVID norms, while one was related to violation of the model code of conduct.
After he was booked in the arson case, nine more cases were slapped against him. These included charges of using a fake Aadhaar card to travel via air, “authorising” six Bangladeshi citizens as Indian nationals, extortion, attempt to murder, and more.
The Uttar Pradesh Police had seized property worth Rs 30 crore belonging to Irfan and others. The Enforcement Directorate had also carried out raids at five locations last year in a crackdown against the four-time MLA, and claimed to have found papers of benami properties.
Naseem had first come to limelight after her husband’s arrest two years ago. In March last year, video clips of her breaking down while speaking to media persons had made headlines, where she had said she was not being allowed to meet her husband in the Maharajganj jail and that they were given only five minutes to meet whenever he was brought to the Kanpur court.
“Should I abandon my husband or consider him dead?” she had remarked, claiming that the cases registered against her husband were false and that the government was troubling him.
Later, she had also written to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, demanding that Irfan be shifted from Maharajganj to Kanpur jail.
In the run-up to the Sisamau bypoll, she made emotional appeals to voters, claiming that her family was being subjected to atrocities, and asking them to help ensure that “Vidhayak ji (Irfan)” is freed from jail.
According to her election affidavit, she owns property worth about Rs 4 crore, a flat in Mumbai’s Bandra and gold-silver jewellery.
Her act of offering water to the Shivling inside Vankhandeshwar Temple in the area on Diwali had sparked a political row as a local BJP leader had then threatened to file 200 cases against her over a call.
The chief of religious organisation All India Muslim Jamaat, Maulana Mufti Shahabuddin Razvi, had also issued a fatwa against her, saying that idol worship was prohibited in Islam.
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