UP Civic Polls: BJP Fielded 395 Muslim Candidates, Over 60 Won; Party Says Community's Doubts About BJP "Busted"

Over 60 Muslim candidates emerged as winners in the municipal election in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a statement Sunday (14 May) claimed that "doubts in the minds of the minority community about the party have now been busted."

The BJP fielded 395 Muslim candidates — 358 for councillor positions and 32 for nagar panchayat chairpersons, with five for nagar palika chairperson roles.

“The party follows the slogan of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ and, hence, tried to give maximum tickets to candidates from the community,” Kunwar Basit Ali, UP BJP Minority Morcha state president, told ThePrint, adding that many Muslims sought municipal election tickets this time.

Some analysts, however, think giving tickets to Muslims for the municipal polls was "tokenism," as per ThePrint's reporting.

Speaking to the news portal, Shashikant Pandey, head of political science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, thought it was "tokenism."

According to Pandey, the BJP, along with the RSS, is working hard to woo the Pasmanda Muslims (who form almost 85 per cent of the total Muslim community in the country).

When it comes to the delivery of welfare schemes, Pandey acknowledged that the Muslim community had not received "step-motherly treatment.”

Aligarh Muslim University's political science professor Mirza Asmer Beg highlighted that no Muslims had been given tickets by the BJP for the 17 mayor posts in the state.

He thinks the BJP's Muslim outreach "seems more like optics as they have fielded Muslim candidates in the lower level of the government," and that this helps them "gain some points among the liberal classes."

The party's exclusion of Muslim candidates in major elections, like the 2022 UP assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, indicates its outreach to the Muslim community is more for show, said Beg, adding that the party aims to change this perception at the local level.

Uttar Pradesh held elections for its municipal bodies in two phases on 4 May and 11 May.

The polls were for a total of 14,684 positions, including 17 mayoral roles, 1,420 municipal corporator positions, 199 chairpersons for municipal councils, 5,327 municipal council members, 544 chairpersons for nagar panchayats, and 7,177 members of nagar panchayats.