Uttar Pradesh Minister Om Prakash Rajbhar claimed on Tuesday that growing support for All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi across the state was causing unease for Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav as the Assembly election period approaches.
According to Rajbhar, speaking to a television news outlet, Owaisi had sought an electoral alliance with the Samajwadi Party, though Yadav did not accept the offer, leaving Owaisi without a coalition partner heading into the vote. Rajbhar said no visible sign of engagement came from Yadav toward Owaisi at that time, and that the absence of a response had pushed Owaisi toward the margins of the contest.
Rajbhar contended that crowd figures from Owaisi's campaign stops in Saharanpur, Bahraich, Kanpur, and Azamgarh had left Akhilesh visibly concerned, based on contemporaneous accounts of how he responded. The turnout at Owaisi's events in those areas had left Akhilesh Yadav unsettled, Rajbhar said.
The SP leadership had grown uneasy about what the AIMIM chief's candidacy in Uttar Pradesh might mean for the party, Rajbhar went on to say — a concern he said mirrored broader unease over how Owaisi's participation in Bihar and West Bengal contests had reshaped the competitive landscape for other parties in those states.
Rajbhar noted that the SP had commissioned internal surveys to gauge whether Muslim voters were moving toward Owaisi and what effect a potential tie-up with the AIMIM might have on its standing among backward communities, adding that the party was contending with three distinct concerns. Whether Muslim voters in the electorate would move their support away from the Samajwadi Party and toward Owaisi's platform remains an open question among analysts tracking the constituency, and Akhilesh had reportedly commissioned a survey on the matter.
A further concern attributed to the SP, as relayed by Rajbhar, holds that any political alignment with Muslim communities could prompt voters from lower-caste backgrounds to withdraw their support. Surveys were being carried out for that reason, the minister said.
Rajbhar put forward the view that any alliance Owaisi might enter into would draw electoral cost toward the Samajwadi Party and the Congress rather than toward his own political grouping, stating that those two parties stood to lose ground while his side would not. He also claimed that roughly four-fifths of voters from the Muslim community cast their ballots for the Samajwadi Party.
Owaisi has continued directing pointed commentary at the SP over its lack of response to his alliance proposal for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls — a wait that had, by his account, run nine days past the deadline he publicly announced. Speaking at a community event in Azamgarh — a district where the Samajwadi Party has historically drawn strong electoral backing — Owaisi urged Muslim voters to step outside what he described as dependence on the Yadav family's grip over the region's politics, a hold he linked to their trademark red cap.
His argument centred on the claim that Muslim voters had backed Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav across multiple generations without gaining a proportional foothold in positions of political power. The AIMIM leader argued that Azamgarh had seen little benefit from the SP despite voters in the area having supported the party through multiple election cycles.
The argument for Muslims building their own political infrastructure drew on an allegation by Owaisi that established parties had repeatedly sought votes from the community under a secular platform while leaving it without adequate representation at the tables where policy is shaped.
