Samajwadi Party cementing pro-muslim credentials with Durga Shakti Nagpal issue

LUCKNOW: The growing furore over the suspension of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal for allegedly posing a threat to communal harmony perfectly suits the Samajwadi Party, which appears to have latched on to the issue ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to both burnish its pro-Muslim credentials and disassociate itself from the Congress.

Analysts say Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s intervention in the matter, through a letter written to the prime minister to ensure that the officer is not treated unfairly, has also willy-nilly benefited the Uttar Pradesh-based party. Gandhi’s personal involvement has made it easier for the SP to demonstrate its distance from the party whose coalition government at the Centre it has been supporting from outside over the past nine years.

The SP’s objective to send out a message to the Muslims that it is willing to take on the Centre to safeguard the community’s interests explains why Nagpal’s suspension was attributed to her alleged decision to get the wall of a mosque in Greater Noida’s Kadalpur village demolished, even as she might have been really suspended because of her sustained drive against illegal sand mining.

With the shadow of Narendra Modi, the BJP’s face for the Lok Sabha polls, looming large over UP ever since he appointed his key aide Amit Shah as the in-charge of the state, the SP needs to ensure that the votes of the Muslim community do not get divided between it and the Congress.

“With the BJP seen as very aggressive about UP under the stewardship of Modi, the SP needs to strengthen its bond with the minorities so that they do not drift towards their old tactic of voting for the party best placed to defeat the BJP,” said Prof Sudhir Panwar of Lucknow University. “That may divide minority votes in certain places, which the SP does not want. This issue helps the SP remind Muslims that it will aggressively fight for issues related to their community.”

Therefore, the more the Congress, the BJP and the BSP target the state government for victimising the IAS officer the more they play into SP chief Mulayam Singh’s game plan. Yadav wants to make sure that Muslims do not drift to the Congress as they did in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, but stay with his party as did in the 2012 assembly polls. The SP also needs to shed the tag of being a saviour of the Congress-led coalition government at the Centre over crucial issues such as the India-US civil nuclear deal in 2008.