Samajwadi Party Alleges Police Atrocity, Rigging After Losing Rampur

Lucknow: The dismal 31% voter turnout in the recent Rampur by-election in Uttar Pradesh (UP) has triggered outrage against the alleged intimidation of voters. In contrast, voter turnout in the constituency in the Assembly election this year was 56.61%.

A day after the by-polls on Wednesday, Samajwadi Party (SP) members in the state Assembly held alleged police atrocities responsible for the low turnout and raised anti-government slogans, The Times of India reported. SP MLAs Lalji Verma and Manoj Pandey alleged that the police “rained lathis” on voters. “We were getting reports from the constituency about police atrocities on voters. This is like killing democracy,” Verma alleged.

Alleging that the low turnout indicated police “terror”, Verma said, “This was done at the behest of the BJP government. The BJP government is killing democratic values.”

SP leaders had alleged that Muslim voters, especially burqa-clad women, were not allowed to cast votes and multiple scrutiny by the district administration forced them to stay at home. 

According to Rampur-based veteran journalist Tamkin Faiyaz, “First, the police created a fear psychosis and prevented Muslim voters from casting votes. During the campaign, Azam Khan himself created fear. RLD leader Jayanat Chaudhary and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad also stressed in their speeches that the administration was leaving no stone unturned to intimidate Muslims.”

Muslim voters “thought that they will face the administration’s brutality if they voted”, he told NewsClick.

The second reason was the “poor selection of candidates”. “Asim Raza belongs to the Shamshi (Punjabi-Muslim) community, which has very less acceptance among Muslims. The Shamshi community numbers only 3,000 while Khans are 80,000 and Syed nearly 17,000. No non-Pathan candidate has ever won the Rampur Sadar seat,” Faiyaz added. Rampur Sadar has 59% Muslim voters and the BJP could never win it.

Regarding the previous elections and the low turnout, he said, “Three elections were held in Rampur within a year—the 2022 Assembly elections, Lok Sabha by-poll and now the Assembly by-poll. Rampur is one of the five Assembly constituencies in the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency. During the last LS by-poll, the Rampur Sadar seat recorded a 31.49% turnout. This time, it increased by 2.5%.”

According to Faiyaz, there were 454 booths under the Rampur Sadar seat with more than 250 in the old city alone. At most booths, the voter turnout was an average of 10%-15%. Booth number 92 got the least votes at 25. These figures are surprising because voter turnout at these booths (old Rampur) was always huge. “If we tally the figures, the turnout in Hindu areas is much higher than old Rampur,” he added.

The veteran journalist also alleged that the way the district administration barricaded Muslim areas and increased night patrolling ahead of the by-poll created fear among the community.

Another Rampur-based journalist requesting anonymity told NewsClick that Muslim women were “not allowed to vote. I went to many areas of old Rampur to report and women were being turned away and not allowed to vote. There is no doubt that the election was rigged. The whole government machinery worked to defeat Azam Khan’s candidate”.

Asim Raza was “leading with a comfortable margin of more than 9,000 votes till the 21st round but suddenly reports stopped coming out and were not shared by the media. The update came after two hours that Akash Saxena was leading by 10,000 in 28th round and was declared the winner”, the journalist said.

SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav has written a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar demanding the cancellation of the by-poll and re-election, PTI reported. again, a party release said on Wednesday. In the letter, he accused the state administration of large-scale rigging and preventing voters from voting and also attached photographs of “police brutality” as evidence, according to a party release.

Even SP president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has demanded repolling. On Wednesday, Sulaiman Mohammed Khan, a practising lawyer, submitted a plea before the Supreme Court alleging that the police used every means to “prevent” voters in Muslim majority areas from voting, ANI reported. He alleged that the police beat up voters and thousands of people were locked in their houses.

“The Supreme Court asked to list our petition in a local court as there is no such urgency. We have done so and hope for a result in the last week of December,” Khan told NewsClick.