The Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh is now working at a furious pace to consolidate Muslim support in its favour.
The party is elated at the response it received from Muslims after Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav publicly criticised the Ayodhya verdict and said that the judgment was based on “faith and not on facts”. According to sources, Samajwadi Party leaders will now fan out into districts and hold meetings with local Muslims.
In these meetings, party leaders will chronicle the party’s pro-Muslim role in the entire Ayodhya movement — right from 1990 to the Ayodhya verdict.
The party is apparently determined to ensure that it regains lost ground among Muslims and that the Congress does not eat into its support base in the next assembly elections.
“The idea is to make the younger generations of Muslims aware of the fact that the party has always worked for minority welfare and has fiercely protected their interests. The youth in the Muslim community was too young to understand what was happening in the early nineties and we will tell them about the sequence of events,” said a senior party leader. The Samajwadi Party also plans to publish a booklet containing all details of the party’s posture during the Ayodhya movement. The booklet is likely to be published in Urdu and Hindi.