Unnerved by reports of the Muslim mood swinging against the Samajwadi Party after the Muzaffarnagar riots, the party leadership will now make efforts to pacify the agitated community.
According to party sources, Samajwadi president Mulayam Singh Yadav will soon visit Muzaffarnagar and interact with the riot victims. This will be the first time that the SP will reach out to ordinary Muslims because, till now, the party had mainly relied on clerics and Muslim leaders to ass-ess the community mood.
Mr Yadav was scheduled to visit Muzaffarnagar on Friday but put off his visit after intelligence inputs said that he might face angry mobs in the riot-hit district, especially after the Friday prayers. The mood among Muslims, in UP in general and in Muzaffarnagar in particular, is hostile towards the SP because their ministers and legislators did not even visit the areas during the riots and neither did they make any visible efforts to contain the violence.
Interestingly, none of the 10 Muslim ministers in the Akhilesh government have bothered to visit the riot-hit areas since violence broke out on September 7 and this has further antagonised the community.
The inept handling of the clashes has made the community so hostile that Mus-lims in several relief camps have reportedly declined to accept any government aid.