LUCKNOW: ‘Badka Phatak’, as they would call it, the den of Mukhtar Ansari, his ancestral house in Ghazipur. ‘Badka Phatak’ (big gate) used to play a crucial role in deciding the outcome of over half a dozen Lok Sabha seats when the gangster-politician was at the pinnacle of his politico-criminal infamy.
There was a common perception that anyone contesting on a seat falling under his fiefdom would not get victory without visiting ‘Badka Phatak’ and taking the blessings of the gangster politician. Such was the influence and stature of Mukhtar Ansari. His political significance can be gauged from the fact that post his death on Thursday night, there was a mad rush of the non-BJP political players to express anguish over the demise of the five-time former MLA and sympathise with his bereaved family.
The top brass of Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress took to social media raising doubts over the reason of Mukhtar’s death and demanded a probe into it. Even the smaller players including AIMIM, Rashtriya Ulama Council (RUC) and Peace Party, enjoying Muslim support in pockets of eastern and central UP, also demanded a probe into his death.
However, the expression of concern and affinity for the dead gangster, who once was synonymous with terror in Purvanchal (eastern UP) with over 60 criminal cases lodged against him, is attributed to his hold over Muslim votes for in at least half a dozen districts – Ghazipur, Mau, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Varanasi and Chandauli -- of his fiefdom in eastern UP where Muslims make around 20 per of the total voting population.
The political experts claim that to alter the political equations in the districts of his fiefdom, a letter written by the gangster used to be sufficient. Though Mukhtar is dead, but his name will echo on every platform and the dominance of his family would continue over Muslim voters in the region. While the Opposition bloc would try to capitalise over his death by raising the doubts to draw the Muslim voters while the BJP would play diagonally opposite by underscoring his conviction and the destruction of his empire of crime and terror under the present dispensation.
The political experts claim that Mukhtar used to have his influence over the elections across the spectrum right from a village head to the Lok Sabha candidate. His brother Afzal Ansari, who won the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Ghazipur on the BSP ticket, is contesting 2024 Lok Sabha election on the Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket. His son Abbas Ansari won the Mau (Sadar) assembly seat on the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) ticket but as a SP candidate in 2022 while his nephew Suhaib Ansari is the SP MLA from Mohammadabad in Ghazipur.
Mukhtar played a pivotal role in supporting Mulayam Singh Yadav to win confidence vote in the state assembly in 2003 when the SP formed government after fall of the Mayawati government. Before the 2009 Lok Sabha election, he joined the BSP to contest Lok Sabha election against former Union minister Murli Manohar Joshi from Varanasi but lost.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, he extended support to the Congress candidate Ajay Rai who was pitted against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha. Interestingly, Mukhtar was an accused in the murder of Awadhesh Rai, the elder brother of Ajay Rai, and awarded life term in this case in 2023. Out of his five stints in UP Assembly, two were driven by the BSP, two as independent candidate and one as the candidate of his own political outfit Quami Ekta Dal.
Mukhtar hopped from one party to another with ease as per his convenience and even the political parties opened their doors readily knowing well that his presence would help them bag a couple of seats in Muslim dominated pockets easily.
