Okhla MLA Asif Mohammad Khan joined Congress few days ago, Firoz Bhakt, Irfanullah Khan join AAP.
By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: As the Delhi Assembly elections near, leaders, and erstwhile activists wanting to leap over political leaderships are are flanking one party or another.
Political parties are also wooing Muslim leaders better their chance. Along with Singer Daler Mehdi, Ram Singh, MLA of Bahujan Samaj Party and Ram Singh Bidhuri, a former Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) legislator, and V K Monga, Okhla MLA Asif Mohamamd Khan joined the Congress party in presence of Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit and other leaders few days ago.
Khan had contested the last Assembly elections in the heat of the Batla House encounter as an independent candidate on high pitch emotional rhetoric against the Congress government, but lost marginally. He, however, won the by-elections on same high pitch on the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) ticket in in 2009.
Now in a programme at the Constitution Club social activist Firoz Bhakt Ahmed, grandson of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and former Aligarh Muslim University Students’Union President, Irfanullah Khan, along with several other Jamia Millia Islamia and AMU alumni joined Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on August 29.
AAP has been desperately looking for some Muslim leaders to contest the upcoming Assembly elections, although they claimed to rise above appeasement politics. Of the 44 shortlisted candidates of AAP, only 4 are Muslims, including woman face of AAP and journalist Shazia Ilmi (RK Puram), besides Mohd Samiyuddin (Malviya Nagar), Shakeel Ahmed Abbasi and Sohail Solahuddin (Matia Mahal). An AAP delegation, led by Arvind Kejriwal, also visited the headquarter of Welfare Party of India in Delhi.
Irfanullah Khan, who is also Chairman of Jamia Nagar Coordination Committee, is slated to contest elections from the Okhla constituency, although according to reports several grassroots volunteers have been opposed to his candidature on technical grounds.