The Asaduddin Owasi-led All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is all set to retain its seven sitting constituencies in the just concluded Telangana Assembly elections. The Hyderabad-headquartered party AIMIM found itself in tough spots in two seats as it won the Yakutpura seat by a hair’s margin of just 878 votes and is leading the Nampally constituency by a small margin.
Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) chief Amjadullah Khan, the AIMIM’s main contender in Hyderabad’s old city, gave candidate Jaffer Hussain a run for his money. The development was quite a surprise for many, as the seat is located in the heart of the old city, an area that nobody would have imagined the AIMIM would face a scare. The expected contest was in fact for the Nampally seat, which Congress Nampally seat candidate Feroze Khan at the time of writing this report was trailing behind AIMIM’s Majid Hussain by just 2,581 votes.
In this election, the AIMIM contested a total of nine seats: Charminar, Yakutpura, Chandrayangutta, Nampally, Bahadurpura, Malakpet, Karwan, Jubilee Hills and Rajendranagar. By 3:30 pm, AIMIM’s Charminar candidate Zulfeqar Ali was announced as the winner after 15 rounds of counting. With the Congress defeating the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), it is to be seen how AIMIM functions alongside it, given that Owaisi has been a bitter critic of the grand old party and has been openly supporting the outgoing Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government.
Other AIMIM candidates who won are: Ahmed Bin Balala (Malakpet), Mohammed Mubeen (Bahadurpura), Akbaruddin Owaisi (Chandrayangutta) and Kausar Mohiuddin (Karwan). The party was trailing in Jubilee Hills, where its candidate Rashed Farazuddin was trailing in fourth place. In Rajendranagar too, AIMIM candidate Mandagiri Swamy Yadav was in fourth place.
Though the BRS lost, it was hoping that in the case of a hung Assembly, the AIMIM would come to its rescue and provide support. Both AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and BRS leaders, including party supremo (outgoing Chief Minister) K Chandrashekar Rao, have always maintained that they were on “friendly” terms.
More importantly, the BRS has also been relying on crucial Muslim votes outside of Hyderabad in the districts of Telangana. The AIMIM had contested the Nizamabad (urban) seat in 2014 and came second, indicating that it had a growing presence outside of Hyderabad as well.
This time, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Dhanpal Suryanaryana won the seat with over 75,240 votes, while Congress candidate and ex-minister Shabbir Ali came second with 59,853 votes. BRS’ Biagala Ganesh came third with 44,829 votes, indicating that he was perhaps unable to draw in Muslim votes as expected with the AIMIM’s support.
In the run-up to the elections, the Congress and AIMIM also traded barbs, with Asaduddin Owaisi calling Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president Revanth Reddy an ‘RSS Anna’. Revanth, in return called Asaduddin a ‘Razakar’, a term that BJP leaders use to attack Muslims. With KCR out of power, it is to be seen if the AIMIM also mends its ties with the Congress party or continues to maintain the status quo and remains a staunch critic of the grand old party.
It may be recalled that the AIMIM, before 2012, was part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in the undivided Andhra Pradesh state. The AIMIM withdrew support after its legislators were arrested when they protested against the expansion of the Bhagyalaxmi temple, an unauthorised construction in Hyderabad’s historic Charminar.