Khalilabad (UP): The discipline of the Dalit voter, the legend around the BSP core vote and anger at the Samajwadi Party has set Muslims thinking — unusually loud and clear this time.

How this plays out on counting day isn’t clear but the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh, 20 years after it left the Congress office, is seriously looking for a way out of what it calls the

bandhua mazdoori (bonded labourer) trap as part of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s flock under the Samajwadi Party banner.

And the way out, as of now, does not appear to lead to either the Congress or the BSP’s door.

There is no siesta in hot and dusty Khalilabad as campaign picks up in the virtually all-Muslim belt of village Ledua Mohua, with an estimated population of about 30,000.

This is one of the many regions in the freshly delimited Sant Kabirdas Nagar seat, where Muslims have played and continue to play a decisive role — approximately one-fifth of the voting population. (Muslims account for 19% of the state’s population).

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Polling here is in the second phase (April 23) but all conversation revolves around the “Mayawati effect.” It seems to have captured the imagination of Muslims, though not quite in the way Behenji might like it to work.

Muslims appear determined to make themselves count and “discover their own strength, ham bhi to apni taaqat aazmayein”, as Abdul Mughni puts it, who teaches Classes 3 and 4 in a madrasa here.

What does that mean in a stiff three-cornered contest? Son of local strongman Hari Shanker Tiwari (who from ministership in the BJP, moved to SP and is now with the BSP) Kushal Tiwari is the current MP, who made it in a by-election a year ago.