With increasing voter base, AIMIM looks to repeat Bihar feat in UP

Party claims strong base in 56 districts; Congress, SP wary of impact on 2022 polls

Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), which sprang a surprise by winning five seats in the recent Bihar Assembly elections, is looking to replicate this feat in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, where polls will be held in 2022.

In Bihar, AIMIM was part of the Grand Democratic Secular Front, which also comprised Upendra Kushwaha-led Rashtriya Lok Samta Party and Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Nearly 75 per cent of the 20 seats AIMIM contested in Bihar, which has total 243 Assembly constituencies, were in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region.

Enthused by its electoral showing, the party is now strengthening its organisational machinery in UP, where it had contested 38 of the 403 seats in 2017 elections and secured a little over 200,000 votes, a minuscule 0.2 per cent of total votes polled, and tasted defeat in all constituencies.

Nonetheless, a few AIMIM nominees managed to finish among the top three candidates, indicating a potential undercurrent of support for the party’s largely pro-Muslim agenda.

Later that year, it bettered expectations in the urban local body elections, when its nominees emerged victorious in some civic bodies. AIMIM candidates claimed 12 municipal councillor posts, four nagar palika parishad posts and 4 nagar panchayat posts.

In fact, the party’s mayoral candidate from Firozabad municipal corporation, Mashroor Fatima, was a runner-up and lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Nutan Rathore, while the BSP candidate finished third.

Even as AIMIM’s state unit seems amenable to ally with “secular parties” to “stop” the BJP bandwagon in UP, it is also ready to contest the elections on its own if its attempts of a pre-poll understanding come to naught. It is looking to forge an alliance with “likeminded parties” to stitch a social coalition of Muslims, Dalits, and backward communities.

“We are preparing to field candidates in about 100 seats in the UP elections,” state AIMIM president Shaukat Ali told Business Standard,  adding that the party would score even better in UP than Bihar since its organisational set up is much deeper and stronger here. “Although, we have a presence in all 75 districts, the party has a strong base in 56 districts of UP.”

“We do not want the BJP to return to power in UP. In 2017, our party was not so strong, but we have worked hard to create a robust organisational set up compared to the last elections,” Ali said.

However, the decision on an alliance will be taken after by the party’s top leadership and Owaisi, who is currently busy with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls.

Since AIMIM’s core vote bank comprises of minority communities, the foray by the Hyderabad-based party is most likely to cut into the traditional votes of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress.

In this backdrop, news of AIMIM eyeing the UP polls caused consternation among those two parties, which had firmed up an alliance for the 2017 elections with a massive roadshow in Lucknow spearheaded by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and then Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

However, the alliance proved disastrous, and paved the way for the BJP to win 325 of the 403 seats. Later, Yogi Adityanath took over as chief minister in March 2017.

“AIMIM will not have any impact in UP, and our traditional vote bank and support base is intact,” senior SP leader and former UP Cabinet minister Rajendra Chaudhary said, when prodded about AIMIM’s likely impact in 2022.

He also played down the party’s likely impact in UP similar to Bihar, observing that the respective political milieu of the two states were distinct, and no parallels could be drawn between the two elections.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Zeeshan Haider said any political party was free to contest elections from anywhere in the country, but AIMIM was in reality the B-team of BJP.

“We will go among the people and expose the surreptitious nexus between the BJP and AIMIM. It is because of the AIMIM factor that Bihar today does not have any Muslim leader in the state council of ministers,” he lamented.

However, Haider conceded that the Congress failed to win the confidence of the people, especially minorities, in Bihar, and convince them that the AIMIM was working to the disadvantage of the community. “We have learnt our lessons from the Bihar polls and will ensure that we do not commit the same mistakes in UP.”