Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI — The data collected by the pollsters shows that the voters from the Muslim community heavily consolidated the INDIA allies increasing the share of Muslim voters polled to the Congress and its allies.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) heavily banked on the election campaign targeting the Muslim community calling them “infiltrators” and “people who have many children”. The party leaders including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi regularly made hate speeches against the community during the election rallies. The hate campaign seems to have pushed the minority community to consolidate behind the opposition alliance.
According to Axis India, the Congress and its allies got 80 percent votes from the Muslim community with Congress securing 38% while the allies gained 42 percent. The Congress has increased the vote share among Muslims by 5% while the allies by 23%.
On the other hand, the BJP got 1% vote of the Muslims while its allies secured 2%. Both the BJP and allies have got their Muslim voter share declined by 3%. The vote share of the NDA dropped from 5% to two percent.
The others got 17 percent noticing a decline of 22% among these parties and candidates. Other parties like the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) have suffered greatly when it comes to the Muslim voter share. BSP chief Mayawati has put the blame of her party’s defeat on the Muslims.
In a statement she said “Muslim community has not been able to understand the BSP despite that party giving them adequate representation in the past several elections. In this situation, the party will give an opportunity to them in future elections, so that the party does not suffer a terrible loss like this election in future.”
The BSP, which fielded its candidates on 424 seats across the country, could not win a single seat in this Lok Sabha elections. The party is said to be the B team of BJP as it had expelled its national coordinator Akash Anand for speaking out against the BJP.
When it comes to the numbers of Muslim vote share, the Lokniti-CSDS survey paints a slightly different picture. According to this data, 65% Muslim voted for the Congress and its allies with the former gaining 38% and the latter 27%. Both Congress and the allies have increased their vote share among Muslims by 5% and 15% respectively.
However, this data does not include the vote share of Muslims for the TMC in West Bengal and the Left alliance in Kerala as they were not in pre-poll alliance in these states. The overall vote share of Muslims for the INDIA alliance would be higher than 65% if the share of all of the INDIA allies is combined.
On the other hand, the CSDS data shows that the BJP got 8% share of the Muslim vote while its allies got 2%. Overall, the NDA got 10% share of the Muslim votes.
The CSDS data also punched a hole in the propaganda of the BJP about Muslim women voting for the BJP in good numbers. The data shows that 7% Muslim women voted for the BJP and 2% voted for its allies.
