Lucknow, 5 June: Five Muslim MPs from Uttar Pradesh have won in the election results of the 18th Lok Sabha. Of these, four are from Samajwadi Party (SP) and one from Congress. Of the winning Muslim candidates, four are from West UP and one from Purvanchal. The SP has fielded Muslim candidates on four seats and Congress on two seats. BSP broke all its records by fielding 23 Muslims as candidates.
However, Mayawati-led party?s account could not be opened in this election. In the 2019 general elections, six Muslim MPs were successful in winning from Uttar Pradesh.
Muslim MPs have been elected in UP since independence: The maximum number of 18 Muslim MPs was elected in 1980 and the least number of 3 MPs was elected in 1991. In 2014, their representation was reduced to zero due to polarization of votes and fragmentation of the opposition. SP fielded four Muslim candidates, all of them won. Samajwadi Party had given tickets to Muslim candidates from Kairana, Rampur, Ghazipur and Sambhal Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh. Its candidates have won on these four seats. From Kairana, SP’s Iqra Hasan defeated Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Pradeep Kumar Chaudhary by 69,116 votes.
SP’s Mohibullah won from Rampur by a margin of 87,434 votes, Zia ur Rehman from Sambhal won by a margin of 1,21,494 votes. Afzal Ansari from Ghazipur won the seat by defeating BJP’s Paras Nath Rai by a margin of 1,24,861 votes. It is noteworthy that there is an alliance between SP and Congress in the 2024 elections.
Imran Masood won on Congress ticket: Imran Masood was in the fray on Congress ticket in the state’s parliamentary seat Saharanpur. Imran Masood defeated BJP’s Raghav Lakhanpal by a margin of 64,542 votes. There are about 19 percent Muslim population in Uttar Pradesh, i.e. 3.84 crore population. In terms of Muslim population ratio,
Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of Muslims in any state of the country, after Assam, Bengal and Kerala. There are Muslims in some parts of Purvanchal while there is a large number of Muslims in Western UP. Muslims constitute 26.21 percent of the population in Western UP. In 7 districts of the state, the population of Muslims is more than 40 percent, out of these seven districts; Muslim MPs were elected in six places in 2019.
How many Muslim MPs were there in Uttar Pradesh in 2014 and 2019? The most interesting thing is that not a single Muslim candidate could reach Parliament in Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 elections. However, in the Kairana by-election, RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan defeated BJP candidate Mriganka Singh. She was supported by SP-BSP and Congress. This seat was vacant due to the death of Hukum Singh.
In the 2019 elections, 6 Muslim MPs were elected from UP. There were 3 MPs each from BSP and SP. From BSP, Kunwar Danish had won from Amroha, Afzal Ansari had won from Ghazipur and Haji Fazalur Rehman had won from Saharanpur.
Whereas, Azam Khan from SP won from Rampur, Shafiqurman from Sambhal and Dr. ST Hasan won from Moradabad. However, after Azam Khan resigned from Rampur seat in 2022, BJP won the by-election. In this election, BSP had contested in alliance with SP and the SP-BSP alliance had fielded Muslim candidates on 10 out of 80 seats in the state. SP gave Muslim candidates on 4 out of 37 seats of its quota, while BSP gave tickets to Muslims on 6 out of 38 seats of its quota.
Muslim dominated seats of Uttar Pradesh are Moradabad, Rampur, Bijnor, Kairana, Amroha, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Bareilly, Meerut, Sambhal, Balrampur, Mau, Badaun, Bahraich, Bulandshahr, Shahjahanpur, Firozabad, Azamgarh, Ghaziabad, Barabanki, Kheri, Lucknow. When how many Muslims became MPs 1980 – 18, MPs 1984 – 12, MPs 1989 – 08, MPs 1991 – 03, MPs 1996 – 05, MPs 1998 – 06, MPs 1999 – 08, MPs 2004 – 10, MPs 2009 – 07, MPs 2014 – 00, MPs 2019 – 06, MPs 2024 – 05 MPs.
