Bihar Polls: AIMIM No Factor in Grand Alliance’s Losses, Reveals Data

But AIMIM’s wait for victory in Bihar ended in October 2019 when the party opened its account in the state assembly by winning the Kishanganj seat

Mumtaz Alam | Clarion India

NEW DELHI — Despite massive crowds in rallies and favourable exit polls after voting, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led grand alliance or Mahagathbandhan (MGB) fell short of only 12 seats from the simple majority mark in the just-concluded elections to the 243-member Bihar Legislative Assembly while the ruling BJP-led NDA managed to retain power.

There is a perception that Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) directly or indirectly damaged the alliance. But does the result data support this charge? Here is an in-depth analysis:

AIMIM fielded 19 candidates, most of them in the four districts of eastern Bihar, popularly known as Seemanchal–Kishanganj, Katihar, Purnia and Araria. Its candidates included 15 from the Muslim community, 2 from Scheduled Castes and 1 from Scheduled Tribes.

Out of these 19 seats, while MGB won 9 seats and NDA walked away with 5 seats, AIMIM also bagged 5 seats, its best performance ever in assembly polls outside Telangana.

Let’s first analyse the 5 seats won by NDA, including 3 by BJP. Did division of votes among non-NDA parties, including AIMIM, help NDA win those seats?

The table below shows that in all 5 seats won by NDA, the AIMIM was nowhere in the fight. In 3 seats, AIMIM got less than 3,000 votes and in 2 others it got less than 6,000 votes. NDA won all these seats directly, defeating MGB with a sizable margin of more than 15,000 votes in 3 constituencies.

The lowest victory margin for NDA (2,304 votes) was in the Raniganj (SC) reserved seat. Here, AIMIM’s Roshan Devi got 2,412 votes but some other smaller parties, and even NOTA, got more votes than AIMIM’s. The seat was won by JDU.

Another seat won by BJP with low margin was Pranpur in Katihar. The party won the seat by defeating Tauqeer Alam of the Congress with a margin of 2,972 votes. Here, AIMIM’s Hasan Mahmood Ahmad got just 508 votes while even an Independent candidate Ishrat Parween got 19,746 votes.

Let’s now move to the 5 seats won by AIMIM. Did Owaisi’s party win these seats by defeating MGB candidates?

The table below will make it clear that the AIMIM won 4 of these seats by directly defeating NDA candidates, not MGB, and with huge margins–the highest above 50,000 votes. It defeated 2 candidates of JDU and 1 each of BJP and VIP. On Jokihat seat, AIMIM defeated sitting MLA of RJD Sarfaraz Alam.

AIMIM got its biggest victory margin in Amour seat in Purnia district where party’s Bihar president Akhtarul Iman polled 94,459 votes and defeated Saba Zafar of JDU with a whopping 52,515-vote margin. Saba Zafar had won this seat as BJP’s lone Muslim candidate in the 2010 Bihar assembly polls–he had won the seat by defeating Abdul Jalil Mastan of the Congress with a margin of 18,828 votes. This time, Mastan finished on the third position.

It is interesting to know that in the 2015 assembly elections, JDU had won 2 of these 5 seats, the Congress 2 and RJD had won 1 seat. All the winners were Muslim faces. This time, Muslim faces of AIMIM have won these seats.

In the October 2015 assembly polls in Bihar, Owaisi’s AIMIM had fielded six candidates. They together polled 80,248 votes. Five out of six candidates had forfeited their deposits. However, four years later, in May 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party fielded its state president Akhtarul Iman in Kishanganj and he got a record number of 2,95,029 votes but finished at No. 2. The seat was won by Congress candidate Dr Mohammad Jawaid.

But AIMIM’s wait for victory in Bihar ended in October 2019 when the party opened its account in the state assembly by winning Kishanganj seat. Its candidate Qamrul Huda defeated BJP candidate Sweety Singh with a margin of over 11,000 votes. The ruling JDU of Nitish Kumar had backed the BJP candidate. However, in this election, AIMIM’s Qamrul Huda finished at No. 3

In the Assembly Elections 2020, AIMIM contested on 19 seats and won 5 of them. In all, the party has polled 5,23,279 votes, more than six times up from 2015.