By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Raipur: As with their party Muslim candidates of Congress in Chhattisgarh struggled utmost to win out two of their seats but lost in dramatic fights. In the new Assembly thus there will be no representation of Muslims.
Muslims who comprise 2% of state population used to have at least 2 MLAs in 90 members Assembly. Badruddin Qureshi from Bhilai Nagar and Mohd. Akbar from Pandariya were the two Muslim MLAs in the outgoing assembly. Both of them were from the Congress party.
While Mohd. Akbar who changed his constituency for the second consecutive time shifted from Pandariya to Kawardha, Badruddin contested from Bhilai. Both this constituencies have not more than 10% Muslim votes.
Three time MLA Mohd. Akbar gave neck to neck battle to Ashok Sahu of BJP, till last moment result was uncertain but in the end Akbar lost with small margin. Akbar Bhai as mentioned on electoral roll, pulled 91,087 votes while Ashok Sahu got 93,645 votes. With huge amount of votes in their accounts both the candidates mark it most interesting fight from the state.
Badruddin Qureshi’s vote account as an incumbent MLA from Bhilai Nagar turned out to be disappointment. He lost with almost 17,000 margins against Prakash Pandey of BJP. He won the seat for the first time in 2008, after losing mayor elections.
Badruddin even with his image as local grass root leaders got total of 38,548 votes while Parakash Pandey got 55,654 votes.
Speaking with TCN Badruddin Qureshi almost copied his party Chief Sonia Gandhi’s statement and said that price rise of essential commodities sunk his ship. “We were unable to reach out and explain to people that price rise was not Congress party’s fault. There was also a leadership deficit to guide us,” Mr. Qureshi said.
He almost completely ruled out any communal polarization against him, “In Chhattisgarh there is no such issue, people doesn’t have such kind of feelings,” he claimed.
Mr. Qureshi is not taking the gap created in the Muslim representation seriously, “This is not something to worry about. Even in past there were times when Assembly didn’t have any community representation but we made our voice heard. So it’s not going to affect Muslim community in any way.”
TCN tried contacting Mohd. Akbar for his comments but he was not reachable.
Some Muslims tried their luck from Raipur Gramin, North and South as independents or on small party tickets but failed to make any considerable impact.