A Bahujan Samaj Party bastion for more than two decades, the Mubarakpur assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh is witnessing a three-way split with the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul-Muslimeen posing a challenge to the both BSP and Samajwadi Party (SP).

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, is relying on Muslim women and other voters, hoping that the Muslim vote split might help them. ​

Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali, the AIMIM candidate from Mubarakpur, has been an MLA on a BSP ticket in the past two elections and has his own voter base.

While AIMIM had been seen as a spoiler on many seats, the candidature of Alam will lead to a tough fight with BSP and SP’s candidate Akhilesh Yadav, a namesake of the SP chief, who got the second spot in the past several elections.

“We will win again, as 80% of the Muslim voters will support me. I will get votes from every community. For the Bunkar community, we have strived to get help from the state by asking the CM to consider them as weak section. I will work in this direction once re-elected,” said the AIMIM candidate, who says Banarasi saree is an original product of Mubarakpur and should be promoted from the place.

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CASTE ARITHMETIC

The BSP candidate, however, seemed confident of his victory, based on the caste and religion arithmetic of the constituency.

Speaking to News18dotcom, Abdussalam also took a dig at Alam for having AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi campaign for him for three days. “Owaisi is here for three days. He doesn’t matter though. Shah Alam will not get more than 5,000 votes and the SP will get only 40,000. I will win with a margin of 70,000. Who cares about Owaisi here? Behenji and my mass base is here. Behenji has 60,000 supporters, which is how Jamali used to win from this seat. I had secured 20,000 votes despite contesting as an independent,” he said.

BJP candidate Arvind Jaiswal said he has worked hard and the development works done by PM Modi and CM Yogi Adityanath for people from all communities could create history.

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