Lucknow, March 12: Majid Ali, the defeated Bahujan Samaj Party candidate in Deoband, calls it a "reverse polarisation".

One of the reasons for the BJP's surge in the Uttar Pradesh elections, it seems, was a steep rise in the majority community's turnout in Assembly segments with sizable minority populations.

Ali claims the minorities, on the other hand, were confused about whom to vote for in order to defeat the BJP: the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance or Mayawati's party.

The trend, he says, has busted the "myth of tactically polarised voting by the minorities".

Ali saw it first hand in Deoband, which for the first time elected a BJP candidate despite its 71 per cent Muslim population because the minority vote got divided.

"Call it undercurrent or polarisation, whichever you prefer, but it is true that my voters were confused and disinterested in the election," Ali, the runner-up in Deoband, said.

"The BJP, on the other hand, succeeded in spreading the false propaganda that my voters were polarised. This whisper campaign led to a spontaneous increase in the turnout of the majority voters, who backed the BJP."

The BJP's Kunwar Brijesh won the seat, located in Saharanpur district, securing 102,244 votes. In 2012, Rajendra Rana of the Samajwadi Party had won from Deoband with only 66,682 votes.

In Gangoh in the same district, victorious BJP candidate Pradeep Kumar Chaudhary bagged 99,446 votes. He had won with 65,149 votes as a Congress nominee five years ago.

Avatar Singh of the BJP won Meerapur, Muzaffarnagar, with 69,035 votes. In 2012, Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Jamil Ahmad Qasmi had polled 56,820 votes on his way to victory.

In all these seats, the runner-up was a Muslim candidate and in two of them, the third-placed candidate was Muslim too. The sum of the second and third candidates' votes was bigger than the winner's share in all three seats.

Five years ago, the BJP had won 17 of the 150-odd seats that had sizable Muslim populations. This time it has won more than 100 of these seats.

The number of Muslim winners in the state has fallen from 63 five years ago to 24, even though the number of Muslim candidates was 20 per cent higher this time. The 2007 election had thrown up 56 Muslim winners.

The last time such a trend was seen was in 1991 during the height of the Ayodhya temple movement, when only 23 Muslim candidates won.

Political observers believe that the minority voters were unsure which party was best placed to defeat the BJP this election. This led to a lower turnout and a vote division among Muslims.

While there was a general perception that the Samajwadi Party tended to protect the minorities, Mayawati kept insisting at her rallies that a combination of the Muslim vote and her assured Dalit support was the best bet against a BJP victory.

"The way Kasab (the executed 26/11 gunman), kabristaan, smashaan, triple talaq, four wives and 40 children were mentioned during the campaign polluted the voters' minds," state Congress spokesperson Dwijendra Tripathi said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told a rally that if a kabristaan (graveyard) were built in a village, a smashaan (cremation ground) should also be constructed there.

Amit Shah, the BJP president, had turned "Kasab" into an acronym for the Congress, Samajwadis and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Unnao MP Sakshi Maharaj of the BJP had said he wouldn't allow Muslim men to have four wives and 40 children.