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Win back pro-Mulayam Muslims, party tells new UPCC chief Khursheed

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The appointment of Salman Khursheed as Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee Chief is likely to benefit the Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Khursheed's appointment has raised eyebrows among party veterans who are critical that he has an "elitist background". But the new UPCC chief says he is unfazed. He said as much in an interview to a private television channel Friday night.

Asked about his defeat in last Lok Sabha election in Farukhabad, he pointed out that he had got 200,000 votes from the electorate. To wit, the Muslim community to which Khursheed belongs. He said he would go into the causes of his party's poor performance and take corrective steps.

Khursheed's optimism might hearten the Congress leadership but his new assignment, to put it mildly, is daunting. During the last ten years, the Congress votebank in Uttar Pradesh had got eroded considerably, particularly after the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992, when the Congress was in power at the Centre. Soon after, the Muslim community in the state crossed over to Yadav's SP.

Khursheed's task of revitalising the Congress in the state looks like a difficult proposition because members of his own community continue to nurse a grievance against his party for failing to protect the mosque.

Congress officials pointed out that though Khursheed enjoys the support of a section of educated Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, the community members who have switched loyalty to Yadav are adamant that the Congress should not be encouraged.

It was pointed out that while Khursheed might have got Muslim vote during the last election, non-Muslims voters also voted in his favour.

Congress sources said that by forging an alliance with the SP in Uttar Pradesh, Khursheed has unwittingly fallen into Yadav's trap. They said that the alliance will not benefit the Congress. Instead, the SP will gain.

For the Muslims as well as the secular-minded voters had cast their lot with the SP. The other non-Muslims voted either the BJP or other parties, sources said.

The recent meeting of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi with Muslim members of Parliament such as Jaffer Sharief and Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, over the latter's demand that a separate quota for Muslims in the Women's Reservation Bill be carved out, has come as bad news to Khursheed.

For leaders such as Sharief have established contact with the SP's Yadav over the tricky issue. While seeking to wrest the initiative, Khursheed also has to tread carefully, taking care not to antagonise the Muslim MPs, it was pointed out.

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