lucknow in a significant development bjp on sunday announced candidature of muslims in two nagar palika parishad npp chairperson seats of rampur the political backyard of senior sp leader azam khan for the urban local body elections due next monththe party has decided to field mehnaz jahan from tanda and dr musret mujib from rampur npp signalling a sharp departure from the recent past when it did not field a single muslim in rampur mehnaz who had won the tanda seat as an independent in 2017 ulb polls is learnt to have been inducted into the bjp recently data show that in 2017 bjp fielded one shobha who could garner only 265 votes and even lost her depositslikewise dr mujib is wife of former bsp leader dr tanveer ahmad who has been demanding a ticket for himself but after the seat got reserved for women the bjp gave the ticket to his wife in 2017 the bjp had fielded deepa gupta wife of local bjp leader bharat bhushan gupta from rampur npp deepa however lost to fatima zabi of the samajwadi party bharat himself contested rampur byelections in 2019 after azam vacated the seat following his election to the lok sabha bhushan however lost to sp candidate and azams wife tazeen fatimahighly placed sources in the bjp said that the saffron outfit may field muslims in two out of three nagar panchayat chairperson seats party sources said that the bjp has zeroed on camry and narpat nagar nps of rampur which have a sizable muslim populationthe move indicates bjps minority outreach in an apparent bid to blunt the aggression of the opposition essentially the samajwadi party which banks heavily on consolidation of muslims accounting for almost 19 of the electoral bloc this also comes as a sharp departure from the recent past when bjp managed to breach rampur during the recent by polls while fielding candidates from the hindu communityin rampur lok sabha bypoll which was held after azam vacated it to retain rampur assembly seat bjp fielded ghanshyam singh lodhi an obc who managed to defeat sp candidate and azams protege asim raja similarly in the rampur assembly bypoll bjps akash saxena defeated raja who was again fielded by sp the rampur assembly bypoll followed after azam lost his membership following conviction in a hate speech casethe bjp has been relaying signals of reaching out to muslims after pm narendra modi during bjps hyderabad convention in august 2022 pressed on the need of reaching out to pasmanda muslims which are socioeconomically backward modi reiterated his observations during a webinar in february the bjp has since been planning campaigns including minority conventions to woo muslim in the run up to 2024 lok sabha elections