BJP minority wing to ask Pasmandas to assert caste identities during census
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Lucknow: In a strategic move, the BJP plans to tap the Pasmanda (backward) Muslim communities by exhorting them to assert their caste identities during the caste enumeration exercise scheduled to be undertaken along with the Census drive in 2026 and 2027.
This may help them avail reservation benefits.
"The community needs to be cautious of hardliner Maulanas and the opposition leaders who just want Muslims to be identified only on religious grounds," said UP BJP minority morcha chief Kunwar Basit Ali.
BJP sources said that the party plans to chart out a nationwide drive to reach out to the Pasmandas, the electorally crucial bloc constituting a sizable potential of the total Muslim population which has traditionally been supportive of the opposition parties like the Samajwadi Party and Cong.
This is seen as BJP's yet another strategy to blunt opposition's aggression ahead of panchayat polls due next year and subsequently the 2027 assembly elections.
BJP national minority morcha president Jamal Siddiqui told TOI that the campaign would soon be rolled out after due discussion and formal approval of the party high command. He said that maximum reservation benefits have been usurped by a handful of Muslim communities while a host of socially and economically oppressed sections remain neglected.
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"Only the creamy layer among the Pasmandas have been benefited. There are scores of castes within the Pasmandas who have left behind in the road to social justice and development. They need to be supported," he said.
Several Muslim communities get reservations in the Central OBC and several state OBC lists. According to a 2005 National Sample Survey Organisation survey, Muslim OBCs constitute around 41% of the total Muslim population.
Muslim groups, however, claim the percentage to be much higher.
In UP, communities like Nai (barber), Qureshi, Ansaris (weavers/Julaha) and Fakir get OBC reservations.
In the past, PM Narendra Modi too had underscored backwardness among Pasmanda Muslims, while highlighting his govt's efforts to reach out to the most deprived sections of society with its various welfare schemes.
During the BJP national executive meeting in 2022, Modi had made a special mention of the Pasmanda Muslims, suggesting the BJP workers to make special efforts to gain support of the community.
This was seen as a reiteration of the party's stand in UP where CM Yogi Adityanath appointed Danish Azad Ansari, a Pasmanda Muslim from Ballia, as minister of state for minority affairs. He is the lone Muslim face in the state cabinet. Subsequently, in 2023 the BJP nominated former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor, also a Pasmanda, as MLC before elevating him as party national vice-president.
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