Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), has been making the headlines of late in Rajasthan. On November 24, both the Congress and the BJP described Owaisi as a stooge of the other. Mahesh Joshi, chief whip of the Congress, accused him of being an agent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and alleged that the Muslim leader fields candidates at his behest. Reacting to Joshi’s statement, Alka Singh Gurjar, national secretary of the BJP, described Owaisi and the Congress as two sides of the same coin.
So why is Owaisi the subject of such hot debate when assembly polls in Rajasthan are three years away? Clearly, his party’s unexpectedly good performance in Bihar–where it won five of the 15 seats it contested–has created ripples of apprehension in the state.
The Bihar results coincided with the results of the elections for six corporations in Jaipur, Kota and Jodhpur. The Congress won four with its strategy of bifurcating existing single corporations in each city into two, carving it in a way that in at least one votes from the minority community would make a difference. The Congress fielded a good number of Muslim candidates and also backed a few independents. Even the BJP was forced to field a number of Muslim candidates. Not surprisingly, the Congress got the minority vote and many of its Muslim candidates won (against very few from the BJP). So the community expected that the Congress would make at least one Muslim a mayor in any of the four corporations it won (they were primarily hoping for Jaipur Heritage Corporation). But when the Congress declined, some of the more outraged party workers (and in fact even the BJP’s Muslim party workers) began openly speaking about how the community would be better off supporting Owaisi if he fields candidates here.
The Congress ought to take any likelihood of Owaisi entering the state seriously. Muslims constitute nine per cent of the state’s population, but in the 200-seat Rajasthan legislative assembly, only eight members of the community made it to the house (seven from Congress, one from BSP). The Congress fielded 15 candidates and the BJP one, Yunus Khan, then a sitting minister who lost to Sachin Pilot, the then PCC chief. The BJP had treated Yunus Khan, a popular Muslim face, unfairly denying him a ticket from his stronghold Deedwana and also to some of his Muslim nominees elsewhere because the party high command considered him close to then CM Vasundhara Raje whom they wanted to cut to size. At the last moment, the BJP fielded him against Pilot knowing well that he would lose on new turf. This worked to the Congress’s advantage in the 2018 assembly polls but it also cost the BJP a few seats.
Gehlot knows the significance of taking Muslims along, which is why he created the Muslim dominant corporations. He’s displayed his hold over the Muslim vote earlier too, when he led an impressive anti-CAA march in Jaipur. But Gehlot is equally careful to not be seen as appeasing them and riling the Hindus. So he settled on four posts of mayors to Hindus of various castes–including women as reservation demanded–and let three Muslims from his party become deputy mayors.
This has assuaged the community somewhat but the Owaisi option has found traction too. Politics in Rajasthan has never been too polarised on communal lines till now. Time and again, there have been efforts to create a third front in the past two decades, but there’s been little to show for it. There were some who had hoped that AAP could create a third front here when it won in Delhi but it has failed to take off in the state. The Congress, then, is still at an advantage. As for the BJP, they should be worried. They have only Vasundhara Raje and Yunus Khan who are capable of taking at least some of the Muslims along, and both have been sidelined. What Owaisi has ensured is a realisation that the Muslim vote can’t be taken for granted anymore; his AIMIM will have to be taken into account now when the state’s main parties decide future strategy.
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