Peace party now turns to Ajit’s bastion

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The battle for 2012 Assembly elections has started unfolding from western Uttar Pradesh with the Peace Party all set to make inroads in the region.
The Peace Party, on Monday, organised a rally in Baghpat — the bastion of Rashtriya Lok Dal president Choudhury Ajit Singh — and the turnout was unexpectedly massive.
“Muslims will no longer allow themselves to be duped by parties like the Congress, BSP and SP. They will go with a party that does not treat them as a vote bank and genuinely allows them to participate in power. We are also addressing the most backward and most dalit caste groups since these remain largely neglected,” says Dr Ayub, the founder president of the Peace Party.
The Peace Party has already made political heads turn with its performance in the Dumariaganj by-elections in June last year where it secured third position, pushing the Samajwadi Party to the fourth and the Congress to the fifth position.
The party repeated its feat in the byelection in the Lakhimpur Assembly seat in November 2010 where it stood second, pushing the BJP to the third and the Congress to the fourth position.
This amply demonstrates that the Peace Party, a fledgling political outfit, is going to spring some surprises in the next assembly elections. After already displaying its strength in eastern and central UP, the party’s rally in Baghpat now proves that it is gaining ground in western UP as well.
It is interesting to note that six districts in western UP, namely, Rampur, Moradabad, Amroha, Bijnore, Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur has a Muslim population between 35 to 50 per cent. The Peace Party, in Dumariaganj and Lakhimpur, had deliberately fielded non-Muslim candidates who beat others in the race with whole-hearted support of Muslims. If the Peace Party continues with the same strategy, it could easily give sleepless nights to RLD which has, so far, maintained its hold over western UP. The RLD leaders, meanwhile, refused to comment on the issue. A senior Peace Party leader says that his party is planning to organise more such rallies in western UP.