Four Muslim candidates make it to Delhi Assembly

Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Ballimaran Imran Hussain. File Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar/The Hindu

The Delhi Assembly election saw a division of Muslim votes but despite that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) managed to win six out of the seven seats which have a substantial population of the community.

A total of four Muslim candidates made it to the Delhi Assembly, down from five last time.

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The four winning Muslim candidates are Imran Hussain from Ballimaran, Aaley Mohammed Iqbal from Matia Mahal, Amanatullah Khan from Okhla and Chaudhary Zubair Ahmad from Seelampur. All four contested on an AAP ticket.

In 2020, the AAP won all the seven seats with a substantial Muslim population – Okhla, Babarpur, Mustafabad, Seelampur, Matia Mahal, Ballimaran and Chandni Chowk. This time it won six barring Mustafabad which saw a three-way split of the Muslim vote between the AAP, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), and the Congress.

While in 2020, the Muslims had by and large voted for the AAP, there was a split in the community’s vote this time but not enough to dent the party’s chances in Muslim-dominated areas.

The only exception was Mustafabad where a split in votes among the three Muslim candidates of AAP, AIMIM, and the Congress paved the way for a big win of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mohan Singh Bisht from Mustafabad by 17,578 votes.

The Muslim candidates together polled 1,12,874 votes in Mustafabad. The AIMIM candidate Tahir Hussain, jailed in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots, secured 33,474 votes to finish third.

However, in other seats where Muslims have a substantial vote – Okhla, Babarpur, Seelampur, Matia Mahal, Ballimaran and Chandni Chowk – AAP candidates won by handsome margins. In Okhla, AIMIM candidate Shifa-ur-Rehman got 39,558 votes, finishing third.

There were broadly three strands of thinking in the city’s Muslim-dominated areas.

One, that the BJP has to be stopped at all cost and for that it is important to vote for the AAP because only the Arvind Kejriwal-led party can stop the saffron juggernaut in Delhi.

Two, the view gaining traction among many Muslims was that the AAP deserted them during the 2020 riots and played a dubious role in “blaming” the Tablighi Jamaat for the COVID-19 spread. Therefore, the community should go with the Congress with Rahul Gandhi “raising the issues of the deprived and being the voice of secularism”.

The third was that some believed there was no point in backing either the AAP or the Congress and it is better to go with Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM as it at least raises community specific-issues and problems. This view gained more currency with the AIMIM fielding jailed members of the community booked in the 2020 riots or involved in the CAA-NRC protest as their candidates.

However, in the end, the first view of voting for the party that stops the BJP seems to have had its dominant say in Muslim dominated areas with AAP managing to win by comfortable margins.

The BJP cleaned out the AAP in Delhi and returned to power in the city after more than 26 years, extending its saffron imprint and dealing a devastating blow to the Arvind Kejriwal-led party whose top leadership crumbled or barely made it.