By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net,
Bihar was a surprise with NDA winning 31 of the 40 seats but it was Modi tsunami in Uttar Pradesh that helped BJP cross the required 272 mark. BJP and Apna Dal won 71 and 2 seats respectively from the state that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. I find it intriguing that of the seven non-NDA seats in UP two was won by Gandhi family (Sonia & Rahul) and rest five was grabbed by the ruling Yadav clan of Samajwadi Party.
The next big news from the Uttar Pradesh then turn out to be that none of the 80 MPs from this state is a Muslim- another historic record of this Lok Sabha election. So what went wrong? Was it that as some commentators suggested confusion among Muslim voters on which party should get their votes or was it division of Muslim votes because of presence of multiple Muslim candidates in a constituency? To understand this let’s look at the data and let’s start with analyzing 2009 Lok Sabha poll data.
In 2009, UP sent 7 Muslim MPs to Delhi- four were from the BSP and three from the Congress. In addition there were 11 seats where Muslim candidates came second- 6 from BSP, 4 from SP, and 1 was a Congress candidate. Two of the seats that returned Muslim MPs also had Muslim candidates at the second position- Sambhal & Kheri. Of the eleven seats that saw Muslim candidates finishing second, only two-Amroha & Bijnor- had Muslim candidates at the third position as well. This shows clearly that in 2009 election Muslims (assuming they vote for only Muslim candidates if such a candidate is available in their ballot) vote was not divided and that ensured the victory of seven Muslim MPs. However, division of vote may have resulted in the loss of Shahid Siddiqui(BSP) in Bijnor and Mahboob Ali (SP) in Amroha- two seats where third place were Muslim candidates who polled votes greater than the winning margin.
In 2014, there are 19 Muslim candidates in second position, one more than in 2009 if we combine 7 winners and 11 runner-up seats. If we look at serious Muslim candidates (belonging to major political parties or polling more than 50,000 votes) then we see that 8 had only one candidate, another 8 had two major Muslim candidates, two seats had 3 Muslim candidates and only one seat Moradabad had four major Muslim candidates. Dr. S.T. Hasan of Samajwadi Party lost Moradabad by a margin of 87,504 votes where Hajid Yaqoob of Bahujan Samaj Party polled over 1.6 lakh votes. This is a clear example that vote division helped BJP win Moradabad which was last represented by Mohammad Azharuddin of Congress.
There are two more examples of Muslim candidates losing election because of vote division. Four-time Lok Sabha MP Shafeequr Rahman Barq lost Sambhal by a mere 5174 votes- lowest winning margin in UP. Barq who used to be a BSP MP switched over to SP just before the election. BSP candidate Aqeel-ur-Rahman Khan came in third position with polling over 2.5 lakh votes.
Rampur saw Naseer Ahmad Khan losing the seat with a margin of 23,435 while Nawab Kazim Ali Khan of Congress polled 1.5 lakh votes to be at 3rd position and Akbar Hussain of BSP polled 81 thousand votes for the fourth position.
But in the other 16 seats, it will be difficult to argue that a division of Muslim votes take place. Eight of them had just one Muslim serious candidates (in most cases the ONLY Muslim candidate in the fray). Only two of these seats that candidates at number 3 position is also Muslim but polling vote less than the winning margin on those seats- meaning their presence cannot be blamed for loss of Muslim candidates.
In Domariyaganj, Peace Party president came fourth polling 99 thousand votes. Muhammad Muqeem of BSP lost this seat by a margin of 103,588 votes. Mata Prasad Pandey of SP polled 1.7 lakh votes for the second position.
There were not many close calls in this election in UP. The smallest winning margin is the one in which Shafiqur Rahman Barq lost by 5,174 votes and largest was Raj Babbar of Congress losing by 567,260 votes. The victor was so emphatic that only 20 candidates had winning margin less than one lakh votes. In fact, the average winning margin of all 80 seats was whopping 1.86 lakh votes. Muslim runner-up candidates fared just a bit better by their average losing margin of 1.55 lakh votes.
If we take the average losing margin of runner-up candidates of each party then compare it with average losing margin of Muslim runner-ups of the same party we find that Muslim candidates losing margin was better than the party average.
Most remarkable is Samajwadi Party where its 10 Muslim runner-ups averaged 1.3 lakh votes losing margin while for 31 SP runner-up the average was 1.6 lakh votes. Congress had six runner-ups with losing margin of 2.38 lakh votes had Imran Masood losing by 65,090 votes. BSP didn’t win any seat in this election but was runner-up in 34 seats with an average losing margin of 1.96 lakh votes, its eight Muslim candidates average losing margin was 1.92 lakh votes. Of coure, BJP didn’t have any Muslim candidates in its list of 78 seats that it contested. BJP candidates came in second position in 7 seats with an average losin margin of 1.7 lakh votes.
If there was a prize for coming second in elections then in UP, Samajwadis will win on better performance on losing margins but BSP will win that prize for most number of seats (34). Both BSp and SP gave ticket generously to Muslim candidates and looking at the result it looks like they worked really hard but lost because of the Modi tsunami destroying every party in its path. SP gave 13 tickets to Muslim candidates out of which 10 ended up in the second spot. BSP gave 19 tickets to Muslims and 8 of them came in second. A clear indication that Muslims vote didn’t move away from Samajwadi Party after the mishandling of Muzaffarnagar anti-Muslim violence.
But Muzaffarnagar violence and polarization did help the BJP in sweeping UP. BJP vote share in the state went up whopping 24.82% in UP. Biggest vote share for the BJP for any state- if there was a Modi tsunami it was here. The extra votes were the crop of Muzaffarnagar violence reaped by the BJP with skillfully mastery by Amit Shah. TwoCircles.net reporter Reyaz found that even Congress and SP workers admitted to voting for the BJP. This vote was across caste line, a Jat woman attending the victory celebrations at BJP headquarters in Delhi on Friday told TCN correspondent that this election was the first time she voted for a non-Jat candidate and it was a vote for Modi. It was a Hindu vote polarization plane and simple, Muslim could have done nothing more to stop this tsunami.