IPT 2.1 | january 2024 | Section 7
In the just concluded Gujarat Assembly elections, the BJP has not fielded a single Muslim candidate, despite the state having a 10% Muslim population. There has not been a single Muslim minister in the state since 1998, when the BJP came into power.
A wide voter-turnout discrepancy has been documented in the by-election held on 5th December for the Muslim-majority Rampur constituency in Uttar Pradesh. According to a report by The Indian Express, in urban areas of the constituency, the voter turnout in Muslim-dominated booths was half of those in Hindu-dominated booths. Besides, the urban areas, where the Muslims are in larger numbers, saw just 28% voting, compared to rural Rampur where the total turnout was 46%. The seat was won by the BJP, beating the Samajwadi Party in a seat the latter had won ten times with Azam Khan, a prominent Muslim leader from the region. The Samajwadi Party have documented instances of voter intimidation by the police in Muslim majority areas. The seat was up for elections as Azam Khan was disqualified after being convicted of hate speech for remarks made against UP Chief Minister and India’s Prime Minister during the 2019 Assembly elections. The said case was registered on a complaint by BJP’s Akash Saxena, the MLA who won the by-elections.
In November, according to a statement by the Karnataka Pradesh Committee’s Minority Department, the draft voters’ list released by the Karnataka Election Commission showed that 27,08,947 names had been deleted, with a majority of them being Muslim names, The new names added totaled 11,13,063, with very few new Muslim names included.
On November 25th, Jammu and Kashmir’s new voter list was published, with around 700,000 voters added, the highest jump ever, bringing the total to 835,9771 voters. The political parties in the region are now demanding an election to determine democratic representation for the state’s voters, where the last assembly polls were held in 2019. The state was stripped of its statehood and special status in 2019 by the Central government.
Amid the campaigning for the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections, BJP MLA Preetham J. Gowda told voters in a Muslim-dominated locality in Hassan city that he will not take up any work in that area if the residents did not vote for the BJP in the 2023 Assembly elections in Karnataka.