In the coming Assembly elections, two of the ruling BJP’s 90 candidates are from the Muslim community: Naseem Ahmed and Mohammad Aizaz Khan. While Ahmed will contest from Ferozepur Jhirka, where more than 80% of the voters are Muslim, Aizaz Khan is contesting from Punahana, where nearly 88% of the voters are Muslim. Both these Assembly constituencies are in the Muslim-dominated Nuh district in southern Haryana’s Mewat region.

In Ferozepur Jhirka, the 2009 Assembly polls saw the BJP’s Hindu candidate win just 5.29% of the vote share. But in 2014, when the party fielded a Muslim leader from the state, it managed to increase its vote share to 12.09%. That year, Naseem Ahmed was the Indian National Lok Dal’s (INLD) candidate and he managed to win with a 29.47% vote share. In 2019, Ahmed was the BJP candidate from the state and though he managed to increase his vote share to 32.4%, he finished second behind the Congress’s Mamman Khan who had a 57.62% vote share.

In Punahana, though the BJP fielded a Muslim in the 2009 polls, the party got only 1.03% of the vote share. In the 2014 polls, another Muslim candidate increased the party’s vote share to 21.67%, finishing not far behind winner Rahish Khan who had a 29.56% vote share and INLD’s Mohammad Ilyas who got 26.85% of the votes. In 2019, when the BJP replaced him with Nauksham Chaudhary, a Hindu candidate, the party’s vote share fell to 17.65%, with the party again finishing third. Hoping for a reversal, the party has gone with a Muslim face this time.

In the Nuh Assembly seat, where 70% of the voters are Muslim, the BJP fielded a Muslim candidate in 1991 but only managed a 7.84% vote share and a fifth-place finish. In 2005, the next time it contested in Nuh, the party fielded another Muslim candidate but the vote share fell to 1.21%. In 2009, when it fielded Sanjay Singh, a Hindu, in this seat, the vote share jumped to 19.61% and it finished as the runner-up. In 2014, Singh again contested and bagged 19.75% of the votes but failed to win. In 2019, the party fielded a Muslim instead and managed to almost double its vote share to 38.55%, just behind the Congress at 41.77%. For the coming elections though, the party has again reposed its faith in Singh.

On why the BJP’s Muslim candidates were unable to win in the past, the party’s minority wing president in Haryana, Jaan Mohammad, said, “Earlier Muslims were associated with the Congress and Indian National Lok Dal. But now they are coming close to the BJP. They are receiving the benefits of the welfare schemes without any discrimination under BJP rule. They will vote for the BJP in the upcoming elections and the party will win these seats.”

The Congress claimed the BJP’s alleged anti-Muslim rhetoric hurt its electoral prospects. Iqbal Jaildar, a former president of the Haryana BJP minority wing who is now in the Congress, said, “Communal hatred increased after the BJP came to the power at the Centre and in the state in 2014. The BJP’s minority candidates could not win because of certain remarks of BJP leaders. Hatred was not to that extent before 2014.” Jaildar resigned from the BJP in 2018 after the death of Muslim youth in a police shootout. He had contested the 2014 Assembly polls from Punahana on a BJP ticket.

Jaan Mohammad, however, downplayed the alleged communal remarks of BJP leaders, saying, “The public understands that these remarks are for election time only.”

BJP’s Nuh district president Narender Patel claimed Muslims were now drawing closer to the BJP. “The distance of Muslims with the BJP has decreased over the years. They have started attending the BJP’s rallies and other programmes. A lot of development has been done (in Nuh) in the past 10 years. People have got welfare scheme benefits. Nearly 8,000 people have got government jobs in the Nuh district alone. We are hopeful of winning some seats this time,” he said.