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It is BJP vs SP in Moradabad city

Basharat Peer in Moradabad.

Moradabad, the brass capital of India, may make a clean sweep of the export markets, but when it comes to choosing its representatives to the legislative assembly, there are no particular preferences.

The Bhartiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party are fighting a close battle for the Moradabad city seat, while the Congress seems to be in for the third position.

Unfortunately, like in most of Uttar Pradesh, elections here are not contested on the basis of issues, but along caste and communal lines.

The BJP gets most of the Hindu votes, while the Muslims, who form the majority of the voters, choose between the SP and the Congress. Other parties are not really in the reckoning in Moradabad city.

The sitting BJP MLA, Sandeep Agarwal, has been the incumbent for the last two terms. But this time there is a strong anti-incumbency wave and Agarwal's opponents charge that he has connections with the land mafia.

"During his first term, Agarwal was fine enough. But this time, he has been involved in grabbing government land, forcibly evicting people and taking possession of their property," says Amlok Singh, the president of the 10,000 plus Punjabi Samaj vote bank.

Singh and his community voted for the BJP in the last two elections, but have joined hands with the SP now. "We are not happy with the present MLA. So all my people are going to vote for the SP," he adds.

The SP candidate, Humayun Kadeer, claims that apart from getting the Muslim votes, the votes from "secular Hindus" will ensure his victory. "I am certainly going to win," he says.

But the Congress has filed a Muslim candidate, Hafiz Sideeq, who represented Moradabad in 1980, when the worst communal riots broke out here. Sideeq, too, has a following

But Kadeer's supporters claim that the Sideeq cannot get more than 5-10 per cent of the Muslim vote.

"When the communal riots broke out here in 1980, Sideeq was the MLA. He played down the fact that hundreds of Muslims were killed. He even blamed the riots on Muslims, saying that they got agitated and attacked a police party," says Kashishj Warsi, an SP supporter.

Warsi, who even remembers the date of Sideeq's statement in the UP assembly (October 26, 1980), adds: "Sideeq sealed his political fate in Moradabad on that day."

Meanwhile, as the SP and BJP trade charges, the BJP is elated, as it has made inroads into Muslim territory for the first time.

One of BJP's election offices has banners in Urdu and a group of Muslim youth are lazily watching a Shah Rukh Khan film on cable TV. It is the party's Alp Sankhyak Morcha office in one of the Muslim strongholds of Moradabad.

"I have nothing to do with the BJP. But the present MLA has been good to us. When the Muslim leaders showed us the door, Agarwal helped us. We are going to vote for him," says Suhail Anwar, the city president of the Alp Sankhyak Morcha.

He claims that around 10,000 Muslims are going to vote for the BJP this time. But SP supporters brush his claims aside. "At the most they can manage 500 votes," says Warsi.

The uncertainty will end when Moradabad goes to polls on Thursday.

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