KAIRANA (UTTAR PRADESH): On Monday, Samajwadi Party (SP) nominated Nahid Hasan as their candidate from Kairana for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. The sitting MLA from this constituency, Nahid was arrested by the UP Police under Gangster Act on January 16. SP’s decision to give him a ticket to contest the poll has drawn scathing criticism from the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
However, his sister, Iqra Hasan, resolutely refutes all the charges and allegations levelled against her brother. A History graduate from Lady Sri Ram college in Delhi, Iqra also pursued law from Faculty of Law at the Delhi University. In her brother’s absence, she is spearheading his election campaign and is leaving no stone unturned to mobilise support in her brother’s favour.
“I returned to India from London, where was doing masters in international politics, in January 2021. Soon after, the Gangster Act was imposed on my brother and mother. All the accusations and charges against my brother are baseless and trumped-up to stop him from contest elections,” she tells the New Indian.
“The ground reality in Kairana is totally contrary to what the media has been portraying. The people here live in complete harmony and there hasn’t been exodus on communal lines,” she firmly asserts. “In 2016, the Bhartiya Janata Party lawmaker Hukum Singh ji had retracted his statement about Hindu exodus. But the BJP is again trying to reignite the issue to reap electoral gains. Our Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ji came here and again harped on the same subject, which is a sham,” she adds.
“Both Mriganka Singh, who is a BJP candidate, and I are from Gurjar community. My forefathers converted to Islam and they (Mriganka’s family) remained in the same fold. Our forefathers were related because of ‘gotra’ and caste,” Iqra states.
Iqra is no stranger to electoral politics and had contested a Zila Panchayat election in 2015 which she lost. She has campaigned for his brother and mother in the past, but clarifies that she doesn’t have political aspirations.
Rajan Jawla, a long-time friend of Nahid, has also taken up cudgels to whole-heartedly help Iqra in the election campaign. Jawla says that Nahid has been his friend for many years and he has always found him to be a decent and affable man. “I have never seen him express any communal sentiment, nor has he ever indulged in any criminal activities. The smear campaign against him by the BJP is political motivated and ridiculous. I firmly stand by him and his family,” he states emphatically.
Voting in Kairana will be held in the first phase of elections in UP on February 10.