A social media campaign was started by the BJP where four of the nine Muslim candidates fielded by the SP were profiled as “criminals” with the party asking the public to be “wary” of them.
For one of the candidates, Aslam Chaudhary, the BJP highlighted a complaint filed against him for “inciting hatred between two communities” after he gave a statement in November last year in the wake of an “encounter” involving seven alleged cattle smugglers in Ghaziabad. Seven youth, including a minor, were shot at exactly the same point in their legs by the police for alleged “cow smuggling”. In a video that had gone viral, Chaudhary was seen accusing BJP MLA Nandkishore Gurjar of protecting the SHO Rajendra Tyagi who was being investigated upon for the encounter and had said that he would “exact revenge” on Gurjar.