2022 UP Polls: Why a Muslim-dominated village is rooting for Yogi over Akhilesh

A Muslim-dominated village in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh is preferring the governance of BJP’s Yogi Adityanath over SP’s Akhilesh Yadav.

Hard as it may be to believe, since the state’s Muslim community has always chosen to vote for the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) or anyone who can take on the BJP, a significant number of residents of Nangla Sahu village in Kithore district is on a mission to ensure that at least half the people there vote for the saffron party.

Nangla Sahu has a 97 per cent Muslim population, and after the 2014 general elections in which the BJP rode to power in India, a few villagers here started supporting the saffron party. The number further grew when Adityanath became the chief minister of the state in 2017, a report in News 18 said.

It added that Nangla Sahu villagers believe that PM Narendra Modi and Adityanath have brought “peace” to the village, giving them “relief from SP leader and MLA Shahid Manzoor”. Youngsters here reportedly say the state of crime was such that there used to be open firing in Nangla Sahu.

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Engineering student Rehan Chauhan was quoted as saying: “There was lot of crime pre-2014, which minimised after 2017. In Yogi government, we learnt what living a peaceful life with cleaner surroundings means.”

According to village elder Arsh Mohammed: “Jis din se Yogi aaye hain, koi chor hi nahi raha (since the day Yogi came, thieves have disappeared).”

Another elderly man, Yamin, when asked about the BJP being a party of Hindus as alleged by the opposition, reportedly said: “Hindu ki party to sari hain, par sare se behtar hai yu (every party is of Hindus, but the BJP is better than the rest).”

Other locals said the BJP MLA ensured a pucca road was made for people to go for namaz, 85 per cent of the village is vaccinated, families get free rations and crime has gone down.