india

Updated: Apr 20, 2019 07:16 IST

It is around 8.30 in the night, and the western disturbance has brought shower of relief over this Uttar Pradesh town. Passion, though, runs high at Shahbad Gate in the middle of town, where hundreds of Muslims have braved the rains to listen to Abdullah Azam Khan, the son of Samajwadi Party candidate Azam Khan.

This week, the election commission banned Azam Sr from campaigning for 72 hours after a controversial remark targeted at BJP candidate Jaya Prada, and Azam Jr is holding the fort for him.

He is yet to arrive, but speakers are keeping the audience engaged with fiery speeches and poetry.

“This election is not about Azam (Khan) and a film actress (BJP candidate Jaya Prada),” a speaker from the dais screams. “It is Azam versus Wazir-e-Azam (Prime Minister) battle. Our lion will now roar inside Parliament in Delhi.” As if in anticipation, the audience roars.

A nine-term legislator from Rampur, Khan has a larger than life image among his supporters. His name evokes unmatched loyalty and an equally strong opposition among local people.

His ability to pull off electoral victory, almost every time, comes from the fact that almost half the voters in the Rampur parliamentary seat are Muslim.

“Ye saher Azam saheb ka hai (this is Azam’s town),” Rehman, a betel shop owner near Rampur junction says. “No one can defeat him here.”

But there has been some decline in Azam’s fortune in recent years.

He introduced Jaya Prada to Rampur’s politics and helped her win the 2004 Parliamentary election. They soon fell out (Prada’s mentor Amar Singh, is Azam’s bete noire), and despite Azam’s open revolt she won the 2009 election.

The BJP won the 2014 election by a whisker and has now signed up Prada to take on Azam in his maiden parliamentary battle. His growing clout over the decades has been an eye sore for many influential Muslim leaders of the area too, which lends another layer of complexity to the battle.

“Rampur contest is about Azam or no-Azam. Prada has fought a long battle with him. She is the only choice for those who want to get rid of Azam,” BJP spokesman and the party’s Rampur in-charge Dr Chandra Mohan said.

Prada is putting up a tough contest in what should have been an easy battle for the Samajwadi Party veteran.

Rampur votes in the third round of polling on April 23, and of 1.67 million voters in this western Uttar Pradesh town, about 50% are Muslim.

Dalits and Lodhs are two major blocks among Hindu population.

The BJP continues to draw support from the upper castes and some backward classes, and will be hoping that a division in Muslim votes will happen because of the Congress candidate, who seems to have won over support from Muslim leaders opposed to Azam.

The Congress polled over 1.5 lakh votes in Rampur in the 2014 parliamentary election, in which the BJP defeated the Samajwadi Party by 23,435 votes. The Samajwadi Party won 3 out of 5 assembly segments of Rampur constituency in the 2017 election, and rest went to the BJP.

Azam’s victory hopes rests on a consolidation of the Dalit-Muslim votes, courtesy the alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party. A victory will restore Azam’s supremacy in Rampur; a defeat will take it away.

Sanjiv Tiwari, associate professor of political science with Delhi university, said the arithmetic of the constituency favoured Azam Khan, but his recent utterances were clear signal of desperation. “It looks like Jaya Prada, who is a two term MP, has made some gains and that has put Azam in an uneasy spot,” he said.