Many Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura have asserted they were denied the right to vote by booth-level officers. The report by Scroll has highlighted that several Muslim voters they spoke to in Mathura, claimed the same, however the Hindu residents they spoke to in the area have not reported similar issues.
The Mathura parliamentary constituency has repeatedly twice elected Hindi film actress Hema Malini to the Lok Sabha with significant margins in 2014 and 2019. It is once again witnessing her candidacy for the third time this year. Malini is contesting against Congress candidate Mukesh Dhangar and Bahujan Samaj Party’s Suresh Singh.
According to the 2011 census, Muslims constitute 8.5% of the population in Mathura district.
As reported by Scroll, Muslims hold considerable numerical strength in the area near the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura. Their electoral support is predominantly divided between the Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which is now in alliance with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, and the Indian National Congress. Scroll reports that voters in this area are largely leaning towards supporting the Congress party.
Zulfiqar Qureshi, 54, an RLD functionary, spoke to Scroll, calling out the opposition for failing to campaign in the vicinity. He also stated that he himself had faced challenges in voting in his own family, saying the Booth Level Officers are to blame for this issue, “But earlier, one or two per cent of voters were affected by it. This time, 15-20% of voters in Nai Basti could not vote because of it.” One 74-year-old lady, Jamrul Nisa, stated that none of the members of her 9-member family were able to vote this year.
Furthermore, according to Hindustan Times, the voter turnout in Mathura witnessed a significant decline, dropping by 12% from 61.03% during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to 49.29% in the second phase of the 2024 parliamentary polls. Similarly, in Amroha where the constituency saw the highest voter turnout out in Uttar Pradesh where polling was recorded at 64.02%. Danish Ali, who is Congress’s Amroha candidate, reportedly had an argument with the police where he was seen talking about how police were harassing voters from voting at booths, “Ban on mobile (phone) was for voters and not candidates.” UP has previously also seen similar instances of voters’ names left out, with Muslims often being the group left out. For instance, Moradabad, which houses a large number of Muslims residents, recorded that a harrowing figure of 80 percent names of Muslim voters were absent from the electoral rolls in the last elections, according to Deccan Herald.
In 2019, Missing Voters, a smartphone app designed to gather data on disenfranchised voters in India claimed that nearly 120 million citizens were absent from voter lists during last 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Furthermore, the harrowing figures suggested that more than half of these missing voters were Muslims and Dalits and women. Similar cases were found in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka.
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