Bareilly, March 4 :     Recently, Begum Noor Bano of Rampur went for high tea to 10 Janpath, New Delhi. As she was settling down, Sonia Gandhi asked: ?Will a Congress leader be able to visit the Ala Hazrat shrine in Bareilly?? Ala Hazrat, 60 km from Raipur, is the nerve-centre of the powerful Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims. The Begum avoided a direct answer. ?I said we cannot take Muslims for granted. The mere presence of Muslim names in our list of leaders will not do. Naam ke saath kaam karna zaroori hai,? she told The Telegraph. Muslims in Uttar Pradesh have ?softened? towards the Congress ever since Sonia Gandhi took over, but a visit to the shrine, where the saint Ala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Raza Khan lies buried, remains an uphill task for the Congress. The shrine has fenced off its leaders from its premises since 1995. The Rohilkhand Muslims, who decide the fate of about 30 Assembly seats, still regard the Congress with suspicion. For, the Muslim ?softening? towards the Congress has also been brought about by factors other than the Congress. First, the Samajwadi Party, to which Muslims turned after the Babri Masjid demolition, did not fulfill its promises. As Raza Khan of the shrine said: ?Mulayam Singh Yadav and the BJP fought with each other to allow the BJP to return to power in Uttar Pradesh.? Second, Muslims have by and large decided that unlike in the 1996 Lok Sabha polls, they will now vote unitedly to defeat the BJP. Munne Mian, who runs a zardosi embroidery unit in Zhakhira, and employs about a 100 Muslim workers, voices the disenchantment. Three years ago, unhappy with Mulayam Yadav, Mian joined the BJP. But with the price rise, his employees told him they would rather quit than work for a man who was a BJP member. Mian left the BJP. Asked which party Muslims would vote for this time, he said: ?Probably the Congress.? The Congress, however, does not know how to deal with this guarded enthusiasm. Hazim Ali Khan, Begum Noor Bano?s son and a Congress MLA from Bilaspur, said: ?All we have is the right playing conditions. Like the Indian cricket team, we should guard against making a hash of things.?