B-TEAM? Owaisi’s party queering Congress pitch in Gujarat

Even though an ABP-C-Voter survey has indicated that as many as 47% of Muslim voters prefer the Congress party as against 19% for BJP and 25% for AAP, the ground realities suggest that the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is queering the pitch for the Congress in Gujarat by foisting candidates in its strongest Muslim as well as Dalit bastions. The Congress party has often called the AAP the BJP’s B-team though the Arvind Kejriwal juggernaut is giving sleepless nights to BJP also, the AIMIM appears to be proving the same charge in Gujarat. Even as the AIMIM’s key office-bearers and grassroots leaders have quit the party over the party’s “double standards”, the Asaduddinn Owaisi-led dispensation has named candidates in constituencies where the votes could split to the BJP’s advantage.

   The AIMIM has announced seven candidates and finalised three others, including in constituencies reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as also general category seats with good Muslim and Dalit populations. This, is exactly when the Congress party is returning to the basics and adopting its electoral formula to garner the Kshatriya OBC, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim (KHAM) voters, who put together add up to about 75% of the electorate. It is to be noted that the AIMIM does not even have a strong network in Gujarat, but promises to emerge as the great divider of Congress votes.

It is the KHAM formula that gave Congress a still-unbroken record of 149 seats in a House of 182 in 1985. The AIMIM has fielded a woman candidate Kaushika Parmar from the Danilimda seat in Ahmedabad city reserved for the Scheduled Caste and considered a sure-shot Congress pocket borough with Shailesh Parmar winning here for two terms. This constituency has a majority mix of Dalits and Muslims.

Similarly, the party has fielded Shahnawaz Khan from labour-dominated Bapunagar in Ahmedabad which is a general seat represented by Congress’ Himmatsinh Patel and has mixed neighbourhoods of Patels, Dalits, Muslims and other Hindu communities. In Mangrol in Junagadh district, which has a sitting Congress MLA Babubhai Vaja, the AIMIM has nominated Suleman Patel. Again, the Mangrol constituency has a good representation of Muslims and Dalits, besides OBCs and Patidars.

AIMIM’s Gujarat unit president Sabir Kabliwala is challenging Congress’ Imran Khedawala from the Jamalpur-Khadia seat. Kabliwala had won from here in 2007 on a Congress ticket and polled over 30,000 votes in the 2012 elections as an Independent when the seat went to the BJP. Khedawala won from here in 2017.

  What also lends credence to the BJP’s B-team allegation on AIMIM is that it has fielded Muslim candidates in general seats represented by BJP but where the Congress has nominated Muslim candidates in view of the community’s population. A case in point is Congress’ Aslam Cyclewala from Surat (East), which is a BJP seat since 2002, where AIMIM has nominated Wasim Qureshi. It is not a coincidence that the AAP candidate in this seat, Jariwala, was a thorn in the flesh for the BJP since he would have split the Hindu vote while Cyclewala would have walked with this seat, which has 92,000 Muslim voters in a constituency of 2.

14 lakh. Now, with the AAP candidate having been allegedly forced to pull back his nomination, it is a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress, along with an AIMIM divider.    Though the AIMIM kept on struggling to get the right candidate, Owaisi addressed as many as four public meetings in Vadgam, the Scheduled Caste reserved constituency represented by firebrand Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani who also enjoys a good rapport with the Muslims.

A Congress turncoat Manibhai Vaghela is contesting against Mevani on a BJP ticket. The AIMIM is all set to challenge the Congress’ strong sitting MLA Gyasuddin Shaikh in Dariapur by nominating Hassan Lala, a senior municipal councillor from the area and former local Congress leader. Shaikh also has another thorn in the flesh in the form of Taj Qureshi contesting on an AAP ticket.

 MP CM Chouhan to campaign for BJP in poll-bound Gujarat on November 18.