The politics in Uttar Pradesh is flaring up before the upcoming elections. The political parties have put their shoes on to gather most of the vote share from the public and fight for the 403 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly. Muslims are going to play a crucial role in the final outcome of the elections and thus, their votes are considered as an asset by the competing parties. The community holds around 19% of the population in UP. As of now, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has declared that his party will be contesting from over 100 seats in the upcoming 2022 elections which will eventually lead to a split in Muslim votes.
Now the question arises, who will UP Muslims vote for? Speculations were being made that a majority of the Muslim votes will go in favour of the Samajwadi Party, but there is a probability that a split will occur and that the Samajwadi Party will witness a fall in the number of Muslim votes.
One part of the Muslim voters would be opting for BSP, and another one will go with OP Rajhar. The remaining ones are supposed to stay with Owaisi. Asaduddin Owaisi is not in a winning position but he is a polarising force and a certain section of Eastern UP will definitely cast votes in his favour. As a result, there will be a decline in votes for other parties.
In the previous legislative assembly elections, Akhilesh Yadav bagged zero seats while Mayawati bagged ten of them. This could also be attributed to the Modi wave in UP because, on one hand, there was Akhilesh who kept on making comments against PM Modi and his government and on the other, there was Mayawati who chose to remain silent and rarely gave a single statement on the PM. This led to people anticipating that Mayawati was making a smart move and keeping her options open by remaining silent. She could be seen as making an alliance with the BJP. This scenario did not only go well for the BSP but also turned out to be helpful for the BJP.
SP and BSP keep on backstabbing each other and are in no condition to make an alliance considering their past tensions. All this goes in favour of the BSP and will help it emerge as a well-performing party. Mayawati is all brains and knows very well that the BJP will be the best-performing party and it will be a masterstroke by her to stand by the side of BJP and enjoy power post elections.
