AIMIM head Asaduddin Owaisi visited Bengal, which will hold Assembly elections in April-May
Calcutta:
The silent visit of AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owai to Bengal’s Hooghly district has sparked further speculation about his political plans for a state due to hold Assembly elections in April-May.
During his visit, Mr. Owaisi met with Abbas Siddiqui in Furfura Sharif, a place of religious importance for Bengali Muslims, and asked him to be the face of his party’s campaign in the state. Siddiqui, who has been openly critical of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, had previously claimed that the Trinamool ruler exploited the Muslim population to obtain votes.
Abbas Siddiqui is the nephew of Furfura Sharif’s main preacher, Toha Siddiqui, who has been supported by Trinamool and with whom Mr. Owaisi did not meet. The AIMIM chief has identified the young Siddiqui, who is in his 30s, as someone who can help the party win votes in Hooghly and other districts, such as Malda, Murshidabad and Dinajpur.
Toha Siddiqui has made it clear that Muslims in Bengal will vote against “communal forces”; Trinamool, which considers Abbas Siddiqui to be in cahoots with the BJP, claims that the opposition party paid Owaisi to split minority votes.
A few days ago, Ms Banerjee said: “… to split the minority vote, they (the BJP) have brought a party from Hyderabad. They (this party) take money from the BJP. Their strategy is that they will take a hard line stance to get Muslim votes for Hindus to vote for the BJP “.
In an interview with NDTV, Mr. Owaisi responded by saying, “My request to the media is: why don’t you ask about the Hindu vote … the vote of the upper caste Brahmins … the vote of the backward class? obsessed with the Muslim vote? Who was responsible when the BJP had 18 parliamentary seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections? These are tough questions for the media to ask. “
Mamata Banerjee has alleged that AIMIM has taken money from the BJP to split the minority vote (Archive)
“On this issue, we have shown that wherever the MIM has challenged it has only benefited the MIM. My effort is to make my party and my candidates win,” he said.
“If Mamata Banerjee makes such outlandish accusations, it is not up to her office, but it shows her clear frustration that she is losing ground,” Owaisi added.
He also told NDTV that his party would participate in the Assembly elections and support Abbas Siddiqui in all matters. “We will go with him … we will contest the elections. What number, in what places we will decide in the coming months,” he said.
Trinamool is confident that Asaduddin Owaisi will not reduce his votes. The party is also confident that Banerjee will have the support of Hindu and Muslim voters alike.
Meanwhile, the BJP, which has deployed some of its most important weapons, Interior Minister Amit Shah and party chief JP Nadda, to back their campaign, has scoffed at Owai’s visit, calling it an attempt to make up ground after some of its leaders crossed. to Trinamool.
Unofficial BJP leaders also say they hope that Owai’s presence in Bengal will hurt Mamata Banerjee more, given that she has Muslim votes.
Thirty percent of Bengal’s voters are Muslim and analysts say they vote for Ms Banerjee en masse, making her nearly invincible. To counter this, the BJP has accused her of “Muslim appeasement”. The presence of Owai, an alternative to that Muslim vote, could be a red flag for Trinamool.
Owaisi has also ruled out an alliance with any of the other political formations, but is rumored to join one of the anti-BJP blocs.
Reacting to criticism that his work in Bengal could help the BJP, he stated: “I am the ‘Laila’ of Indian politics and I have a lot of ‘Majnus’ … but that doesn’t make any difference to me.”
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