BJP plans to expand votebase among Pasmanda Muslims

According to BJP insiders, BJP hopes to expand a new vote bank of Pasmanda Muslims as nearly eight per cent of the voters from the community favoured it during the 2022 Assembly elections.

Earlier BJP had held a meeting of the National Executive in Hyderabad. In this meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the party leaders and workers to reach out to the most backward sections of the society.

He had said that we should reach out not only to the Hindus, but also to the weaker sections of the minority communities. Referring to the minority community, he gave the example of 'Pasmanda Muslims'. A special and backward section of the Muslim society was mentioned by PM Modi in the party meeting.

This has attracted the attention of political experts. Political and Muslim affairs experts believe that PM Modi has mentioned Pasmanda Muslims as a well-thought-out strategy.

This can be the roadmap for future politics of BJP. The BJP is focusing on that section of the Muslim community, which is traditionally considered the vote bank of the opposition parties.

Experts believe that the Pasmanda Muslims were placed at a lower position than the rest of the Muslims. This is because they are those Muslims who converted from other religions and adopted Islam. These converting Muslims were part of the local population and they have converted to Islam much later.

Most of these people used their titles on the basis of occupation, such as Ansari (weaver) and Qureshi (butcher). The leaders of the Pasmanda Muslims claim that they constitute about 80-85% of the total population of Indian Muslims. The remaining 15-20 percent of the population is of Ashrafs. The Pasmanda community raised its voice several times that the leadership positions were occupied by Ashraf Muslims, despite their presence in the Muslim population.

For the first time in the 14th Lok Sabha, about 400 Muslims managed to reach the House. In this, the number of Muslim leaders of Pasmanda background was only 60.

“Usually, when our leaders tour districts, they meet people from the community and beneficiaries of schemes randomly. But, soon such outreach programmes will be held in an organised manner. With a focus on all 44,000 booths, we will speak to at least 100 beneficiaries from the Pasmanda Muslim community in each polling booth in the first phase of the programme. A schedule of such programmes is being finalised and will be announced very soon,” said Kunwar Basit Ali, who’s president of BJP Minority Morcha’s Uttar Pradesh unit.

Ali said that there were around 4.5 crore Pasmanda Muslims in Uttar Pradesh who have benefitted from the schemes rolled out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Union and Yogi Adityanath-led state governments.

“With the welfare schemes, the BJP has successfully created a separate section of beneficiaries within Muslims,” he said.

“The party hopes that if leaders meet beneficiaries from the Pasmanda Muslim community regularly, they could become a new votebase for the BJP. And if they support the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, that will hamper chances of opposition parties,” said another party leader.

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