By TwoCircles.net Special Correspondent
Ahmedabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had previously avoided fielding Muslims in elections in the state, has fielded nine Muslim candidates the local bodies’ elections being held in six municipal corporations on October 10. The total number of candidates fielded by BJP is 548.
This is being interpreted as a bid by chief minister Narendra Modi to improve his image after he has been openly asked by his party’s allies not to come to come Bihar to campaign even for BJP candidates.
By fielding Muslims, Modi wants to prove that the party under him in Gujarat is now approaching Muslims and wants to improve relations with the biggest minority group.
The development is considered to be surprising in view of the fact that BJP earlier openly said that it did not want the vote of the Muslims.
After BJP won the Kathlal assembly in a bypoll on September 13, Modi in a press statement claimed that 65 per cent of Muslims cast their votes in favour of BJP which not only helped BJP win the seat for the first time since Independence but with a huge margin. In December 2007 assembly polls, Congress had won Kathlal seat with a margin of just 3,000 votes but BJP in the bypoll wrested it from Cngress by a margin of 21,000 votes.
While Modi’s claims was not 100 per cent correct but the details of the votes polled, particularly in Muslim dominated villages of Kathlal, indicate that Muslims a some places had vote in favour of BJP candidate as well.
But the Muslim BJP leaders say that Modi has given tickets to Muslim candidates for civic polls in Amedabad, Surat, Rajkot and Jamnagar keeping in view the response of the Muslims to BJP candidate in Kathlal.
While BJP has fielded two Muslims in Ahmedabad, four in Jamnagar, two in Surat and one each in Rajkot. All the Muslim candidates have been fielded from Muslim dominated wards where BJP previous fielded Hindu candidates but they always lost.
The most prominent face among the Muslim candidates is retired Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Abdullah Saiyed from Sarkhej ward in Ahmedabad. After retirement, he joined the BJP in April 2009 and campaigned for BJP candidates during April 2009 Lok Sabha elections. He also worked for he party during Kathlal by-poll.
Commenting on the Muslims being fielded in municipal polls for the first time, BJP(minority cell) president Sajjad Hira said : “This is a good development. Muslims are not `jagir'(property) of any political party like Congress, Samajwadi Party or Bahujan Samaj Party”.
He hoped that the party would field Muslim candidates in the forthcoming zilla (district) panchayat and taluka panchayat elections as well.
In his reactions to the development, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind(Gujarat) president Shafi Madani said that it did not mean that there was any change in basic ideology of the BJP. “But what does it indicate is that Modi wants to show the people at national level that he is acceptable to Muslims in Gujarat and hence, why is he being not allowed to campaign in Bihar’?”
`So it is political compulsion of Modi which made him field Muslim candidates in municipal polls in Gujarat”, commented Madani.