By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Mumbai: Winning two seats, the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) made inroads into the dominantly saffron Maharashtra assembly on Sunday.
The Owaisi brothers led party had fielded 24 candidates. Winning 25,314 votes, Yusuf Pathan Warish (Byculla, Mumbai) trounced nearest rival BJP’s Madhukar G Chavan.
One of the picture forwarded by MIM supporters on social media
Imtiaz Jalil won the Aurangabad (Central) seat as he defeated nearest rival Shiv Sena’s Pradeep Jaiswal by 20,000 votes.
The party’s 24 candidates garnered 0.9% vote share (4,89,614 votes) in its first assembly polls outside Andhra Pradsh/Telengana, a clear indication that Muslims in Maharashtra deserted their traditional parties – Indian National Congress (INC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) – and were now looking at MIM as its own.
Most of the candidates of the party with Kite symbol were from Muslim dominated areas, especially in Marathwada, which was part of Nizam of Hyderabad’s state prior to Independence. More candidates from Marathwada region were obvious also because the MIM already has a footprint at the municipal level with as many as 11 corporators in the Nanded municipality.
MIM’s chances of sending an MLA to the Maharashtra assembly had two major hurdles: the aggressive Hindutva parties and the fact that there were several Muslim candidates in each of the seats it was contesting. Also, the stunning debut for the Owaisi brothers’ party has indicated that the MIM was able to overcome the division of Muslim votes.