At the BJP office in Juhapura, Ahmedabad. Javed Raja At the BJP office in Juhapura, Ahmedabad. Javed Raja

Around 2 pm on Friday, Mustafa Vora and Yasmin Shaikh were busy persuading residents of Maktampura ward to vote for them in Sunday’s municipal elections, and their party — the BJP. The newly formed ward has about 70,000 Muslim voters, including residents of Juhapura, the largest Muslim ghetto in Ahmedabad, and 6,000 Hindu voters who live in residential societies at the “border”.

Maktampura also has, for the first time, a BJP election office.

Wearing saffron scarves, Vora and Shaikh distributed handouts with photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, BJP president Amit Shah and state president R C Faldu. The handout, among other promises, says how “the government covered more than 12,000 Muslim women under life insurance schemes”.

This time, the BJP has given tickets to over 500 Muslim candidates. It’s the highest tally after the party allotted around 300 tickets to Muslim candidates in 2011, soon after Modi started his Sadbhavana mission to promote harmony.

“BJP did not have an office anywhere in Juhapura. If the party put up a poster, people used to tear it down. Such was the anger among people who could not forget the 2002 riots,” said Munirkhan Pathan, 40, who joined the BJP three years ago.

“But in this local body elections, the BJP has sprung a surprise by presenting Muslim residents as a political alternative,” Pathan added. Outside the new BJP office are life-size posters of Modi standing near a lotus, the party symbol, and a list of the party’s four candidates who are contesting from Maktampura.

On Friday evening, Vora and Shaikh along with the other two BJP candidates — Abhay Dhirajlal Vyas and Alpaben Patel — addressed a meeting near a mosque in the locality. Accompanying them were retired IPS officer Abdullah Ibrahim Saiyed, chairman of the Gujarat State Wakf Board and BJP MLA Kishoresinh Chauhan.

Only a few responded when Vora and Saiyed asked the audience to raise their hands to show who would vote for the BJP. “This is the reason why Maktampura had remained backward,” Saiyed told the audience. “Try us at least once in this election for development of your area,’’ MLA Chauhan told the gathering.

Asked about the party’s election pitch here, Pathan said, “We have been telling the residents that they need to side with the BJP if they want to develop the area. We have been telling them that they have to worship the rising sun. We are asking people to vote for development, not for the party. The entire area had been voting for Congress and is still struggles when it comes to basic amenities.”

When contacted, the head of Gujarat BJP’s minority cell, Sufi Mahebubali Chishty, said that apart from Maktampura, the party has put up Muslim candidates for the first time in areas like Behrampura, Jamalpur and Rajkot.

“Last time, over two-third of our Muslim candidates won and Narendra Modi, as chief minister, did not let them remain as mere councillors but gave key posts to 120 of them,” Chishty said. “We have never seen BJP flags in our area in several years,” said Mumtaz Bano, a Juhapura resident. “We live in an area that has largely remained underdeveloped and perhaps it is time to put away the past.”

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