The leadership of All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, which wastes no time in accusing the secular parties of denying due representation to Muslims, appears to have little idea as to how many seats it is contesting across India in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Neither the top party sources approached by this correspondent nor its website makes mention of it. The party leaders keep changing the figures, names of constituencies, and candidates.
Instead, AIMIM perhaps believes in ensuring the defeat of the Muslim candidates of the secular parties. For example, it rushed Waqar Siddiqui to file his nomination from Madhubani at 2:55 PM—just five minutes before the expiry of the time limit on the final day of filing of papers–against Rashtriya Janata Dal’s M A A Fatmi, Bharatiya Janata Party’s sitting MP, Ashok Yadav, and others. Fatmi had served as the Union minister of state for human resources development in UPA-I.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen charges the RJD, Samajwadi Party, Congress, Trinamool Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, etc. with using the Muslim only as a vote-bank. But it remains a mystery as to how it can empower the community when its leadership is not aware of its candidates outside Kishanganj in Bihar as well as Hyderabad in Telangana and Aurangabad in Maharashtra, the two seats from which it won last time.
In Uttar Pradesh, it is contesting in alliance with the breakaway faction of Apna Dal led by Pallavi Patel. The alliance has been named PDM (Pichada, Dalit, and Musalaman). Here it was initially announced that the party is contesting from seven seats: Badaun, Sambhal, Azamgarh, Firozabad, Moradabad, Amroha and Meerut. Election in most of the seats is over.
In some of these seats, the AIMIM had performed better in last year’s civic bodies election.
Confusion in Bihar
But in Bihar, it is going alone. Till the filing of this article on May 23 the leadership could not provide the names of the candidates and constituencies from where they are contesting or have contested.
At the start of the polling process, it was announced that the party would field candidates in 15 seats. Then the figure was reduced to 13 and then to 11. But actually, only Akhtar-ul-Iman, the lone MLA and its Bihar unit chief threw his hat in Kishanganj, which went to poll on April 26 (the second phase).
However, three days after the completion of the second phase of polling he suddenly announced that AIMIM would be contesting from nine more seats. He made it clear that Bhumihar, Rajput, and other economically backward classes candidates would be fielded. This created a storm and people started questioning as to why the party had not put up its candidates from three other seats of Seemanchal—Araria, Katihar, and Purnea–which too have a substantial Muslim population. For example, if Kishanganj has 68% Muslims neighbouring Katihar and Araria have between 42% and 45% population of the community.
Party insiders now say that it was a strategy not to field candidates from other Muslim dominated seats of the region. The plan was to concentrate only on Kishanganj as the party has no trust on the probable candidates from the neighbouring Muslim-dominated seats. This is simply because four out of five victorious MLAs of AIMIM crossed over to the RJD after the 2020 Assembly poll leaving Akhtar-ul-Iman alone.
Vote-cutter image
In contrast, the nine other seats selected by AIMIM has a very small Muslim population. So, the party is not at all in the fray to win any seat other than Kishanganj, but to cut votes of other secular parties. If the party is not contesting to win then how can it claim that it is trying to promote Muslim leadership?
Contrary to this in Uttar Pradesh most of the seats it has contested has substantial Muslim population and the candidates belong to the community.
Incidentally, if the latest available information is to be believed, most of the AIMIM contestants in Bihar are non-Muslims.
Apart from Madhubani, AIMIM has fielded Farrukh Raza from Pataliputra where RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s eldest daughter Misa Bharati, is locked in a tough battle against sitting BJP MP, Ram Kripal Yadav.
Last time Misa lost from here by about 39,000 votes.
Like Madhubani, the Muslim-Yadav factor plays a crucial role in Pataliputra. AIMIM sources had earlier said that the party chief Asaduddin Owaisi would campaign against Misa simply because her father had appealed to the voters of Kishanganj to vote for Congress. Though Pataliputra goes to poll on June 1 Owaisi had not yet come to campaign.
Besides these two Muslim candidates, the party has fielded Anzarul Hasan from Muzaffarpur, Priyanka Chaudhary from Karakat, and Rana Ranjit Singh from Seohar. The party has put up a Dalit from Gopalganj reserved seat while the names of its candidates from Jehanabad, Valmikinagar, and Maharajganj could not be provided. Interestingly, the party in the first week of May announced that it would be contesting from East Champaran (Motihari) but subsequently, it was replaced by Muzaffarpur.
Before flying for Aurangabad for campaign early this month party leader from Bihar Engineer Aftab Ahmed told this correspondent that AIMIM had offered its support to Hena Shahab, widow of former RJD MP, Mohammad Shahabuddin, who is contesting from Siwan, which goes to poll on May 25. But she rejected this gesture. Hena is contesting as an Independent and getting support from the upper castes of Hindu votes who are upset over the allotment of ticket to Janata Dal (United) and not BJP.
Similar support has been offered to Dadan Yadav who is contesting from Buxar where the RJD has fielded Sudhakar Singh (Rajput) while BJP Mithlesh Tiwary (Brahmin). The AIMIM strategy is to woo some Muslims away from RJD as Dadan may cut some Yadav votes.
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