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Updated: Oct 06, 2019 07:08 IST

The Samajwadi Party (SP) has fielded Tazeen Fatima, wife of SP lawmaker Azam Khan, as its candidate in the upcoming Rampur assembly bypoll in what is seen as an attempt to retain one of the party’s strongholds in Uttar Pradesh.

The bypoll has been necessitated because of Azam Khan’s election to the lower house of Parliament in the April-May Lok Sabha polls.

Rampur, which is among the 11 assembly seats where bypolls will be held on October 21, stands out in many ways. This is the sole Muslim majority district in Uttar Pradesh (51% Muslims and 46% Hindus, according to the 2011 census); Khan has won the seat nine times since 1980. Neither the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party nor former chief minister Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party has ever won the seat. Since 1980, the Congress has won the seat only once, in 1996.

Unlike her husband Azam Khan, who is known for making controversial remarks, Fatima, 70, currently a Rajya Sabha member, did not come across as a vocal politician until the day she filed her nomination papers

Minutes after stepping out of the Rampur collectorate on Monday, Fatima challenged the BJP. “Not only the people of Rampur but also all Indians know that the cases filed against us are false and wrongful. I would also say that the bureaucracy has fallen to an unprecedented low. The cases have been filed out of vindictiveness and vendetta...I would like to tell the BJP that the government machinery and bureaucracy they are misusing to harass us today can be used against them when they are out of power,” she said.

Azam Khan, his family, friends, and associates have had a total of 85 cases — some of which pertain to land grabbing (primarily over Mohammad Ali Jauhar University of which Azam Khan is the lifetime chancellor), thefts of buffalos and goats and power pilferage — registered against them since the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. A majority of the cases were filed in the past three months, an official in the district administration said.

A Rampur court on Thursday issued warrants against Khan, his wife and son Abdullah Azam after they failed to appear before it in connection with the case related to his son’s alleged forged birth certificate. Local BJP leader Akash Saxena, who filed the case, said that Fatima should either withdraw from the contest on moral grounds or she should be disqualified by the Election Commission.

But Fatima seems undaunted. “I still have more than a year left as a Rajya Sabha MP. But I have decided to contest the Rampur seat because in Parliament I could not highlight the plight and problems of the people of Rampur and especially the persecution of SP workers by the UP BJP Government,” she said after filing her nomination papers.

Prior to that, she had deposited Rs 30 lakh dues and fine with the UP electricity department, which had accused her of power theft in the first week of September. Fatima had secured anticipatory bail from a local court a week before.

While the formal poll campaign is yet to start, Azam Khan’s supporters are reaching out to voters highlighting government action against their leader and his family.

Fatima has been keeping quiet; this is the first time she is contesting a direct election. Although she has not spoken much, she has been in the news once in a while. More recently, journalists in Delhi asked her to comment on her husband’s alleged sexist remark against his fellow Lok Sabha MP Rama Devi on July 25, when the latter was presiding over the House during a discussion on the triple talaq legislation. Fatima had told the press that there was a conspiracy to prevent Azam Khan from speaking. She had said that Urdu was a sweet language and what he had said had been misinterpreted. Azam Khan later tendered an unconditional apology on the floor of the House.

According to analysts, the Samajwadi Party has fielded Fatima to gain from the controversy and garner sympathy from Muslim voters who dominate the constituency — over 260,000 against 130,000 Hindus.

The by-election is likely to witness a straight contest between the SP and the ruling BJP with Azam Khan as the central figure.

The SP declared Fatima’s candidature on September 29, hours after the BJP announced Bharat Bhushan Gupta’s name for the seat that has never been won by a non-Muslim since the first election in 1952.

The Congress has fielded Arshad Ali Khan and the BSP Zubair Masood Khan.

SK Dwivedi, a political analyst and retired head of the department of political science, Lucknow University, said: “It might be different this time in this seat. Indeed, BJP never won the seat in Azam Khan’s territory, but the BJP has made him more controversial than ever before and has managed to put doubt in the minds of the people about him.”