Examining the ‘Muslim vote’ has long been an election pastime of journalists who learn the same lesson every time; there is no such monolith and in the absence of a ‘Black Swan’ moment that galvanises the community into a singular cohesive response, their vote in Uttar Pradesh, like elsewhere in India, usually gets fragmented by local preferences and their own sub-castes and groups.
Yet, with Muslims at 19% of the population in UP, every party’s poll strategists slice and dice how they imagine the vote will go.
And this time, despite Mayawati’s assiduous wooing of the community with 97 tickets to Muslim candidates, the ‘gatbandhan’ between Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi is still hoping for arithmetic to push a rare consolidation – with the Chief Minister pulling in the bulk of the vote and the Congress providing incremental gains.