The dozen-odd Muslim legislators in the BSP, who have been dumped and denied tickets for the Assembly polls, are now working overtime in their respective constituencies to ensure the defeat of the official BSP candidate.
While some of these Muslim MLAs have managed to get tickets form themselves from other parties, others have not yet been lucky in this regard. Muslims in UP have a sizeable population in about 113 Assembly segments. The districts where Muslim population is between 20 to 49 per cent are Rampur, Moradabad, Bijnore, Saharanpur, Bareilly, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Bahraich, Balrampur, Siddhartha Nagar, Jyotiba Phule Nagar, Shravasti, Baghpat, Badaun, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Bulandshahr and Pilibhit.
The BSP has denied tickets to sitting legislators, prominent among them being Shahzil Islam (Bareilly) Haji Yakub Qureshi (Meerut), Nawab Kazim Ali (Rampur), Farid Mehfooz Kidwai (Barabanki), Akbar Hussein (Moradabad) Anees Ahmad alias Phool Babu (Pilibhit) and Shahnawaz Rana (Bijnore). Of these, Haji Yakub Qureshi and Shahnawaz Rana have joined the RLD and are contesting on the RLD symbol whereas Farid Mehfooz Kidwai is now contesting his seat on a Samajwadi ticket. Nawab Kazim Ali has returned to the Congress fold. Anees Ahmad, Akbar Hussein and Shahzil Islam are contesting as Independents.
These legislators are now campaigning against the BSP in their respective constituencies and trying to impress upon Muslims that the BSP is essentially anti-Muslim.