A brand new innings for Azhar

Cricketers have joined electoral politics before. Some like Manoj Prabhakar have come a cropper. Some like Chetan Chauhan and Kirti Azad have made it to Parliament. But few have created quite the same buzz as Azharuddin. Because Azhar is special. In the annals of cricket he is among the few – Pataudi, Jaisimha, Sachin Tenbdulkar, Gavaskar being names that spring to mind – to have stood for something more than the game itself.

In Azharuddin every galli cricketer of moderate means identifies himself. If Hyderabadis feel any disappointment with Azharuddin at all, it is that he has chosen not to contest from Andhra Pradesh but from a far locale like Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. Hyderabad would have taken pride in sending him to Parliament as their representative. For if there is anything that the Azhar persona represents, it is Hyderabad.

As a cricketer, of course, he is supreme. As a person, he is humble and friendly. Few voters, particularly Muslims, would fail to be impressed by a personality that wears its talents so lightly.

The Congress party’s treatment of Azharuddin has been special. He was brought into the party by the high command as a response to the Samajwadi Party’s move to enlist the support of Sanjay Dutt. So it was in UP that the Azhar card was always planned to be played. So Moradabad it is.

Moradabad is brass country. Located about 160 km from Delhi, Moradabad, built by and named after the Mughal prince Murad Baksh, is the capital of the brassware industry. It is perhaps no coincidence that Robert Vadra, Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, hails from these environs. That fact alone illustrates the top billing Azhar has been getting from the Congress party.

Truth to tell, Azhar’s election race is not going to be easy. The importance of his into the Congress is not limited to fighting an election in Moradabad and winning it, but in cementing the party’s ties with the Muslims of not just UP but the entire country. The Azhar signing effectively answers the Samajwadi Party’s claim of being the custodian of Muslim interests in UP and the BJP’s antipathy to anything Muslim.

In the last few elections, the electoral race in Moradabad has been between the Samajwadi Pary and the BJP. However, the BJP’s strength in UP as a whole has waned even as the potency of masjid demolition politics has lost its fizz. This election, therefore, presents an opportunity for the Congress to reenter the picture. And Azhar is the instrument of that reentry.

A fact in favour of Azhar is that the sitting MP from Moradabad has done a defection to the BSP, and will be Azhar’s main contender. Further, there is no possibility of Azhar not being accepted by the local Congress unit, as it was UPCC chief Rita Bahuguna herself who did a survey of relevant factors and decided that Azhar fits like a glove into the Congress strategy in UP.

About 40% of the voters in Moradabad are Muslims. Moreover, the predominantly Pathan Muslim Assembly segment of Thakurdawa has just been merged with Moradabad as a part of delimitation. The 60,000 Pathan Muslims in this segment have traditionally been Congress voters. Concurrently, a lot of the Jat votes that usually went to the BJP have been dissipated on account of delimitation.So the first part of the Congress strategy here -- that is giving the Congress a fair chance of winning -- has been achieved. With the SP candidate here being a weakling, the race is between Azhar and Shafiqur Rehman, now of the BSP.