Naqvi’s khichdi panchayat broke Azam’s stranglehold on Rampur

NEW DELHI: The huge surprise win by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rampur Assembly byelection, the first time that the party won the seat, is being attributed to multiple reasons, including the popularity enjoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the pro-poor measures taken by both the Central and the state governments.
The byelection was necessitated due to the disqualification of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan following his conviction in a 2019 hate speech case. The seat, since 2002, has never gone beyond the control of Khan or his close family members and hence it was assumed that this time, too, the SP candidate would win. The SP had given the ticket to Khan’s protégé, Asim Raja.
In order to break this decades-old “Chakravyuh” of Azam Khan, the BJP decided to give the election management of Rampur to senior party leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who was elected from this seat to the Lok Sabha in 1998 and ever since then, has been active in the region. When Naqvi was a cabinet minister till very recently, his home and office would see a long line of people, mostly from Rampur, who would travel 200 km to meet him and go back satisfied with the assurances given by him.
“Naqvi, despite being a Rajya Sabha member, never disconnected his ties with the people of Rampur. Due to this, when he took charge of the byelection, people responded to his request to vote for the BJP candidate and symbol,” a Lucknow-based party functionary told The Sunday Guardian.
After being informed of his new challenge, Naqvi shifted to Rampur and started coordinating BJP’s election preparations. To reach out to the voters, who had never voted for the Lotus symbol, he started organising “Khichdi Panchayats” in which he would speak to the voters while serving and sharing khichdi with them.
As per official figures, Muslim, Dalit, Yadav voters add up to 65% of the total electorate in Rampur. The BJP candidate, Akash Saxena got a whopping 62% of the total votes polled, the highest ever polled by a BJP candidate.
“Naqvi realised that it was a difficult election and he needed to do something distinct to attract people to the BJP fold. It is with this idea that, while moving away from the traditional methods of erecting an election stage to deliver election speeches or organising rallies Naqvi started Khichdi Panchayat and just listened to the people’s problems and demands who came to attend the gathering. The voters were pleasantly surprised to see a senior leader like him sitting with them and talking about the work done by the government even as they were having something as simple as a “khichdi”. The majority of these “Khichdi Panchayats were organised in areas dominated by Muslims, Dalits and in remote villages,” a party leader who was handling the election management said.
Incidentally, Naqvi resigned from the Union Cabinet in July after being directed by the party leadership. After moving out from his ministerial bungalow and relinquishing his ministerial responsibilities, Naqvi started spending more time in Rampur to strengthen the party rather than get upset for being dropped from the Cabinet.
Naqvi’s strategy to reach out directly to the common people, especially Dalits, backwards, farmers and those from the Muslim community, has led to a larger acceptance of the BJP even in sections which have traditionally stayed away from the party. The Thursday win comes just months after the BJP has won elections of Zila Panchayat chairman post and the June Lok Sabha byelection.