SP, RLD vie for Jat-Muslim votes in UP elections

Lucknow, Mar 8 (UNI) The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) are all set for a political battle in western Uttar Pradesh in the forthcoming Assembly elections to garner votes of the Jat and Muslim communities.

Both the parties are hoping to exploit the western belt of the state where sugarcane growers from the Muslim and Jat communities form a major part of the electorate and largely decide the fate of the candidates contesting elections.

The two parties have already started poaching each other's influential leaders of the region.

SP's Lok Sabha MP from Muzaffarnagar Munawwar Hasan's recent switch-over to the RLD is being perceived as a setback to the ruling party's prospects in at least a dozen assembly constituencies -- Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Saharanpur, Ghaziabad and Bulandshaher.

The exercise of wooing voters had already been started by RLD chief and former Union minister Ajit Singh with the election of Mahmud Madni as the Rajya Sabha member in 2006. Belonging to the Deoband school, Madni's influence on the Muslims is expected to work favourably for the RLD in the Saharanpur-Deoband belt.

On the other hand, the ruling SP, too, is not lagging behind.

Sitting RLD MLAs Samarpal Singh, Ganga Prasad Pushkar and Prem Singh Daroga have switched loyalties to join Mulayam Singh Yadav-led SP.

Of the 10 'dominated constituencies' of Meerut, Bulandshaher, Khurja, Amroha, Aligarh, Mathura, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnore, Baghpat and Kairana, the RLD bagged seats only in the last three, whereas, it lost in the first seven in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Cane price has always played a decisive role in the election of the candidates. RLD withdrew of support from the government on the issue of cane price. The SP on its part is stressing on the Rs 30 hike in cane price during Mulayam's regime.

UNI