WB voters stop Owaisi on his tracks

To ensure Trinamul victory, Muslims in Bengal voted against MIM's candidates

The expected eastward march of the All India Majlis Ittehad-ulMuslimeen has been stopped in its tracks by voters in Bengal and this has sent some clear signals to the party.

When it comes to voting against the BJP, Muslim voters would avoid a split of their support between two contending sides. They would support whatever is a better alternative to the BJP. They would not prefer a weak party even if it represented the community.

What the AIMIM faced in the Bengal assembly elections was nothing short of a drubbing. All its seven candidates lost and none could save his security deposit. Each of them got less than 1,000 votes.

It appears that Muslims in Bengal voted en bloc for Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress (TMC). They even voted against Muslim candidates of other parties to ensure the win of TMC candidates. Muslims comprise 30 per cent of Bengal’s population and a majority of them are spread over four districts -Murshidabad, Malda, North

24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas. In these four districts, which together have

63 seats, elections were held for 61 seats. Mamata’s party managed to get 58 seats.

AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi, probably realising the way the winds were blowing in Bengal, limited AIMIM’s exposure to seven seats. Even to gain a toehold there, Owaisi chose to go as an ally of Furfura Sharif cleric Abbas Siddiqui, who invited Asaduddin Owaisi to Bengal. Later, Siddiqui decided to float his own political party, the Indian Secular Front (ISF). He fielded 30 candidates but won only one seat; from Bhangar. This saw many local Muslim leaders who first joined the AIMIM switch their loyalty to the TMC.