With both Azam Khan of Samajwadi Party and Nawab’s (Kazim Ali Khan) family of the Congress out of fray, and Muslims maintaining a silence on their views about the candidates, battle of votes in the Minority dominated Rampur Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, is going to be a triangular contest.

As part of seat-sharing agreement between INDIA bloc constituents, Congress and the SP, the Rampur seat has gone to the latter. Elections in Rampul will be held in the first phase on April 19.

As the constituency is dominated by around 60 per cent of Muslim voters, the strategy of the INDI alliance candidates of the SP is to avoid polarisation before the polls.

As part of the strategy, SP president Akhilesh Yadav is avoiding campaigning in Rampur. However, with both the SP and BSP fielding Muslim candidates, it is for sure that the Minority votes would get divided — which could ultimately benefit the BJP.

A senior political observer commented that never in the past, Rampur voters were so silent on their views. This new trend in the voters is proving to be a difficult guess for the political analysts.

Swords have been drawn between Azam Khan faction and Akhilesh Yadav in the Samajwadi Party over selection of candidates and later Akhilesh Yadav prevailed by giving ticket to a lesser known Mohibullah Nadvi, an Imam occasionally in Delhi mosque.

On the other hand, the sitting BJP MP Ghanshyam Lodhi, who won in the bypolls, has been repeated by the ruling party while BSP has fielded a new young face Zeeshan Khan.

While BJP leaders are crisscrossing the constituency every day, the SP candidates and its supporters were silently meeting the people of the district.

It was reported before the candidates were declared, Azam Khan wanted that anyone from Yadav family or Akhilesh Yadav himsel should contest from Rampur. But later, an Imam was given the ticket which irked the Azam’s supporters.

Former District President of Azam camp, Virendra Goyal has clearly said that Azam Khan is my guru, we will not support the election of SP candidate Mohibullah Nadvi . Rather, we will support BSP candidate Zeeshan Khan”.

Though the Congress and AAP leaders were supporting SP candidate Mohibullah, some supporters of Azam Khan were still opposing him or had gone silent.

Asim Raza, a staunch follower of Azam Khan, who had contested the last bypolls on SP ticket, was also mum.

This is the first time after decades that none of the Azam Khan or Nawab families were contesting the polls.

While Noor Bano of the Nawab family is supporting the SP candidate, her son Naved Mia is reportedly to be on the BJP side.

Azam Khan is lodged in Sitapur jail, his wife in Rampur jail and his son Abbas is in Hardoi jail.

Meanwhile, when this reporter tried to speak to a cross section of people in the Rampur constituency, most of them were not ready to express their views.

Tariq Ahmed, who runs a tea shop near the bus station, admitted that the atmosphere in Rampur has changed adding that earlier there was regular police harassment. But he refused to say whether he will support BJP or SP or BSP.

Raghuvar Pandey , who owns a Banarasi paan shop near Rampur railway station, claimed that now Muslim too were supporting the BJP in a big way due to abolition of Triple Talaq, free ration and other welfare schemes of the government.

SP candidate Mohibullah Nadvi confidently told this reporter that the entire party is united and all are campaigning in their own way. “We will win no doubt and it is just the rumour that there is revolt in the party,” he said,adding that ”Azam sahab is a big leader of our party and we all respect him a lot.”

BJP MLA from Rampur Akash Saxena said, “We have won the bypolls and now will break all records to win this election.”

“Azam Khan has lost his sheen in Rampur as people know very well that it is difficult for him to come out of jail, so there is no question of him having any say in this election,” he claimed.

There are 108 criminal cases lodged against Azam Khan and his family , 8 cases where he had been convicted and was in jail on account of those.

As per the math of caste and religion of the voters in Rampur, 52 per cent of the Muslims belong to Khan-Pathan bloc — of BSP candidate Zeeshan Khan — whereas the SP candidate from the Turq community of Muslim, has around 1.50 lakh voters.

Of the total around 17 lakh voters, 9 lakhs are Muslims in Rampur. Among the Hindus, Dalit has a strong presence along with Lodhs and Brahmins. There are around 1.5 lakh Lodh votes and one lakh each of Brahim and backward. There are around 2 lakh Dalits in the constituency.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections , SP candidate Mohammad Azam Khan had won defeating BJP candidate Jaya Prada.

But later when Azam won in the 2022 assembly polls, he vacated the Lok Sabha seat. In the bypolls, BJP’s Ghanshyam Lodhi won the elections defeating Asim Raza of SP by just around 35,000 votes.

In the 2014 polls, Nepal Singh of BJP was the winner.