Poor bargain: Mulayam is alienating Muslims. Here's how

The Samajwadi Party has announced seven nominees for the Rajya Sabha, and not one is Muslim. Even its candidates for the Legislative Council, the Upper House of the assembly, include only one Muslim.

This has drawn strong criticism from the Muslim community, and from within the party as well.

The party was already under fire for promising 18% reservation to Muslims in Uttar Pradesh. It had announced the same measure a year ago, and then as now, had been called out for promising what it could not deliver. The quota would breach the constitutional limit on reservations.

"It is not possible and the Samajwadi Party knows it. They know they are losing the trust of the Muslim community, so out of desperation, Mulayam Singh Yadav is making these hallow announcements," said Munkad Ali, a senior BSP leader.

It says something about our contemporary polity that this anger is directed at a party that has been seen as a well-wisher of Muslims since the Ram Mandir movement of the early 1990s. Mulayam had become a messiah of Muslims when, as the chief minister of UP, he had acted to prevent the Babri Masjid from being demolished. (It was razed later during the rule of BJP's Kalyan Singh.)

It earned Mulayam the trust of the Muslim community, which banded with his original Yadav community to give the SP the formidable Muslim-Yadav vote block.

Also read: Bloody record: Is 'secular' SP more communal than the BJP?

Now, the MY combine is disintegrating. The SP lost much of its goodwill with the Muslims when the Akhilesh Yadav government failed to stop the riots in Muzaffarnagar despite clear warnings, and then made half-hearted efforts to provide relief and rehabilitation. The disgraceful handling of the Dadri lynching only deepened the Muslims' disappointment with the party.

The community now appears to be gravitating towards Mayawati's BSP, for good measure too, many argue, as the latest Rajya Sabha candidates list has only confirmed their fears.