Mamta Banerjee has alleged that BJP is giving money to Owaisi to divide Muslim voters, Owaisi has rejected the allegations and retorted that Muslims of West Bengal are not Mamta’s jagir.
Syed Khalique Ahmed | India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—A war of words has broken out between West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimin (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi over the issue of Muslim voters in West Bengal where the next assembly elections are due in April 2021.
Mamta Banerjee, whose party Trinamool Congress (TMC) has been securing majority of the Muslim voters in previous elections, feels that Muslim voters might shift to AIMIM and that may result in political loss to her party in 2021 assembly elections. She is already facing a tough challenge from BJP which is working hard to throw Mamta out of power. In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP won as many as 18 seats from the state out of a total of 42 seats. TMC won 22 and the Congress won two seats. With such a good performance in Lok Sabha polls, BJP feels that it could dislodge TMC from power in 2021 assembly elections and that is why it has mobilized all its resources to mobilise voters in its favour. And this has scared Mamta.
Owaisi, who is a Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad, has announced that his party will contest the West Bengal elections. His party contested the recently concluded assembly elections in Bihar and won five seats. Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) parties include Congress and other non-BJP parties levelled allegation that AIMIM had cut into the votes of the “secular parties” and this became the reason for their defeat in Bihar elections.
But Owaisi rejected their allegations giving details of the votes polled by the so-called secular parties in constituencies where AIMIM put up its candidates but lost. He said that even if the votes secured by AIMIM were added to the votes polled by the candidates of the “secular” parties, the latter would have lost even then because of the large gap of votes between the BJP-JDU candidates and those of the “secular” parties. Owaisi said that the secular parties failed to mobilise their own party workers and supporters and were unnecessarily blaming AIMIM. He said that in a democracy every one has a right to contest elections.
During a public rally on Tuesday, Mamta was reported to have alleged that the BJP was giving money to AIMIM to divide the Muslim voters. She alleged that the same thing happened in Bihar elections. Accounting for 27 per cent of the total population in the state as per 2011 census, majority of the Muslim voters in West Bengal have been voting for TMC for the last one decade. Mamta feels that she could suffer political losses if the Muslim voters switched over to AIMIM or some other party. That is why she had sharpened attack on Owaisi to ensure that Muslim voters continued to remain loyal to her party.
Reacting quickly to Mamta’s allegations, Owaisi tweeted, “So far you’ve only dealt with obedient Mir Jaffers & Sadiqs. You don’t like Muslims who think & speak for themselves. You’ve insulted our voters in Bihar. Remember what happened to parties in Bihar that kept blaming their failures on “vote cutters” Muslim voters aren’t your jagir”.
Stating that Mamta’s allegations are “baseless”and “she is restless”, Owaisi said that he could not be bought with money by anybody. “Her allegation is baseless and she is restless. She should worry about her own home, so many of her people are going to BJP. She has insulted the voters of Bihar and the people who voted for us”, AIMIM president tweeted.
Stating that the economic condition of Muslims in West Bengal is worse than Muslims in other states, Owaisi said that the Muslims had become completely alienated during Mamta’s rule.
Currently, there are 59 Muslim MLAs out of a total of 249 MLAs in the state. Though Muslims are present in all the constituencies in the state, they dominate the assembly constituencies in Malda and Murshidabad districts. Owaisi is reported to be concentrating in these two districts from where he can easily win seom seats.
Owaisi is said to be holding parleys with smaller political parties for electoral tie-up in West Bengal polls as he did in Bihar assembly polls.
