Mumbai: Congress and its allies often accuse the AIMIM of being the “B-team” of the BJP, and as results of this assembly poll show, AIMIM candidates bagged votes in the range of 20,000 to over 50,000 votes in all the seats it contested across segments which had minority pockets.
While the Muslim population of the state is around 11.56%, there are 31 assembly seats across Maharashtra where the minority community makes up more than 20% of the electorate.
Out of the 16 seats AIMIM contested, it won one (Malegaon Central), came second in five constituencies, third in three, fourth in six and fifth on one seat.
However, the biggest winner in these seats is BJP which has bagged 10 of the 13 seats it contested, suggesting that it was able to not only consolidate the majority vote but garner support from some minority neighbourhoods as well. The BJP strike rate of 76% and its vote share of 19.9% is the highest among all parties in seats which have Muslim concentration (see graphic). The next best score is of Shiv Sena UBT, which contested 7 and managed to win five of them. Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Congress won 6 and 4 respectively.
Among smaller parties, SP and AIMIM succeeded in winning such seats. After a see-saw battle in Malegaon Central, incumbent AIMIM candidate Mufti Ismail won the seat by the wafer-thin margin of 162 votes. He got 1,09,491 votes against Asif Shaikh Rasheed of ISLAM party’s 1,09,491.
But what gives credence to the AIMIM claims that it is not a “vote cutter” is evident from its performance in a few other seats. In Aurangabad East, former MP and AIMIM state president Imtiaz Jalil got 91,113 votes against BJP’s Atul Save and lost by a slender margin of 2,161 votes.
In Mankhurd-Shivajinagar where three-time MLA Abu Asim Azmi seemingly faced an uphill task after NCP (Ajit Pawar) Nawab Malik announced his candidature, it is AIMIM’s Ateeq Ahmed Khan who came second, losing to Azmi by 12,750 votes while Malik came fourth with 15,501 votes.
In Aurangabad Central where Naseer Siddiqui of AIMIM lost to Shiv Sena’s Shivnarayan Jaiswal by 8,119 votes, the Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate got 37,098 votes and was relegated to third position. “The results clearly show that in many seats MVA candidates spoiled the chances of AIMIM candidates. We are not B-team of any party or alliance,” asserted AIMIM city president Raiees Lashkaria who got 2,937 votes in Versova and was placed fourth. Shiv Sena (UBT) sole Muslim candidate Haroon Khan won this seat by defeating Bharati Lavekar (BJP) by 1,600 votes.