Owaisi, Ambedkar tie-up may upset Congess-NC P arithmetic
A new front is taking shape in BJP-ruled Maharashtra, having the capability of upsetting the calculations of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance (Congress-NCP), being fashioned by Sharad Pawar.
The Prakash Ambedkar-led Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) and Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), by joining hands, have the potential to stir up the politics of the state and cut into the Congress’s Dalit-Muslim votes.
The Bhim-Mim alliance (Bhim means followers of Bhimrao Ambedkar and Mim is the short form of the AIMIM) broadcast its arrival in two rallies in Solapur and Aurangabad. And those by no means could be described as ordinary mobilisation.
The alliance, named “Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi”, has come at the worst possible time for the CongressNCP, which is getting its act together to become the sole alternative to the BJP.
Ambedkar and Owaisi joining hands is no good news for the Congress-NCP also in view of the fact that some smaller parties like the Swabhimani Shetkari Saghtana of Raju Shetty are planning to have talks with Ambedkar. Raju Shetty, an MP from Hathkanangale in Kolhapur district, is the leader of the first NDA outfit which parted ways with the ruling alliance at the Centre and in the state over its alleged neglect of the cause of farmers. Shetty now feels that the Congress-NCP are not taking along smaller parties with them. But, Shetty is not happy with Owaisi’s politics either.
A state Congress leader remarked that the politics of reservation for the Marathas has alarmed the non-Marathas, including the Dalits and the Muslims, and therefore these communities are becoming increasingly restive.
While no party can afford to say anything that’s detrimental to the interests of the Maratha community, the NCP and Congress are seen as the biggest supporters of its cause.
While Ambedkar and Owaisi declare their venture is against the BJP, the experience in Maharashtra so far has been that the actions of the two leaders in the past have helped the saffron party. There have also been accusations from their detractors that they have been “planted” by the BJP, a charge they dismiss.
But looking at their current rise through the prism of the past could be misleading. The question is not how much credibility Ambedkar and Owaisi have, but why they have been drawing sizable crowds.
Solapur has been the home turf of former Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who used to boast that despite being Dalit, he contested from the general category seat. This time either Shinde or his daughter Praniti, who is a Congress MLA, is expected to be the Congress candidate.
Aurangabad is the bastion of the Shiv Sena, and Chandrakant Khaire is representing the city in the Lok Sabha for four terms. Headquarters of the backward Marathwada region, it has a sizable population of Muslims and Dalits. The Shiv Sena refers to Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar and the AIMIM is the second-largest party in the municipal corporation there. The party won two Assembly seats in the last polls in the state. Marathwada was earlier part of the Nizam state and the home base of the AIMIM is Hyderabad.
Ambedkar first became a Lok Sabha member in 1998, when Pawar, then in the Congress, had ensured a rainbow coalition, by virtue of which the Congress and its allies, including four Dalit leaders, had won 42 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra. He was elected in 1999 too from his Akola constituency in the Vidarbha region.
This year the grandson of B R Ambedkar has been in the spotlight in the wake of the Bhima-Koregaon issue and the Maharashtra bandh called by him following the violence. A section of the Congress-NCP is making a pitch for tying up with the BSP to counter Ambedkar in the Vidarbha region, where he has pockets of influence.
Even the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s estranged ally, wants rational Muslims and Dalits to “not fall” for the “bogus” alliance, insisting that it will only help the BJP.