Bihar Polls 2025: Asaduddin Owaisi says AIMIM will join INDIA bloc if party gets six seats in assembly election

With only days left for the Assembly elections in Bihar, the All India Majlis-e-Ettehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday said he had written to Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Tejashwi Yadav about joining the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) bloc for the polls to prevent divions of “secular votes” but “now, now it’s up to them to take decision on this”.

“If they do not do this, people of Bihar would see who wanted to make BJP succeed and who wanted to stop them. We’ve shouldered our responsibilities…,” he added, while addressing a public meeting in Kishanganj after launching his party’s four-day ‘Seemanchal Nayay Yatra’ (journey for justice) in the northeastern border areas of the State.

The AIMIM chief is set to visit the Seemanchal (border) districts of Bihar: Kishanganj, Purnea, Araria and Katihar. The four districts hold around 24 Assembly constituencies where the population of Muslims is in a sizeable number to decide the electoral fate of a candidate. Earlier, Mr. Owaisi, an MP from Hyderabad, had introduced a private member’s Bill in Lok Sabha, seeking the creation of a Seemanchal Region Development Council under Article 371 of the Constitution to address the challenges faced by Bihar’s border areas.

During the yatra, the AIMIM leader is to address multiple public meetings, besides holding road shows highlighting “regional backwardness and developmental issues”. “For several decades, the fate of the people of Seemanchal area has been decided by someone sitting in Patna but this will not happen now. People of Seemanchal will decide their fate for themselves”, Mr. Owaisi said, and those gathered, mostly young people, cheered aloud.

In the 2020 Assembly poll, AIMIM had won five seats in the Seemanchal area but in 2022, four of the party MLAs switched their loyalty and joined Rashtriya Janata Dal, leaving only the State party chief and MLA from Amour constituency, Akhtarul Iman, to the AIMIM. “This time the party wants to expand its foothold in Seemanchal and other areas as well, and so wants to contest more seats than the previous 2020 Assembly poll,” he said.

When asked about the number of seats his party would contest in the upcoming elections, if it were facing it alone, Mr. Owaisi told local media persons in Kishanganj, “When the list (of candidates) will be released, it becomes clear.”

The party entered the Bihar poll arena with the 2015 Assembly elections but could not win a single seat. It opened its electoral account in 2019, when the party’s candidate Qamrul Hoda won the Kishanganj seat in the 2019 bypoll.