Asaduddin Owaisi: Cornered in his own den?
Beginning in the 1950s, and especially over the past four decades, the Owaisis and their All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) have run an unchallenged political monopoly in Hyderabad. While not losing the Lok Sabha constituency even once since 1984, the party has also done well in the assembly.
Even in the November-December 2023 state polls, it won seven seats, largely in the Muslim quarters of the Old City. One of these, Nampally, in fact, falls outside the LS constituency. But this thumbnail sketch, implying total area domination, also conceals a few truth.
The key nuance is that since 2014, the AIMIM vote share in its traditional stronghold has come down in the Telangana assembly election. In fact, in the latest iteration, the party came close to losing two of its sure seatsâNampally and Yakutpuraâscraping through in the latter by 878 votes. This is not counting the Goshamahal assembly seat in Hyderabad, which the party has always lost. This is where the controversial Muslim-baiter, T. Raja Singh of the BJP, who has 105 criminal cases against him, has won thrice since 2014.
So, is the AIMIM losing ground? Opinion is divided among Muslims, and that at a time when firebrand party chief Asaduddin Owaisi has dreams of taking the party national. The countervailing fact? While the AIMIM vote share in the assembly is down, the AIMIM supremo has won the Hyderabad LS seat by polling more than 50 per cent of the votes in 2014 and 2019. Both times, his main rival was the influential Bhagavanth Rao of the BJP.
This time, the saffron side has fielded a woman, hospital owner Kompella Madhavi Latha. She hit the trail early, even before she had formally joined the party and the election schedule was announced in March, and is looking to consolidate the 230,000-odd catchment votes Rao would get and perhaps try for another 100,000 sympathisers to tilt the scales. Latha has already upped the ante. “I am here to fulfil PM Modi’s missionâ¦he has sent me here to cut someone’s patang (kite),” she declared early on. The kite is the poll symbol of the AIMIM. Educationist Gaddam Srinivas Yadav (BRS) and district Congress president Sameer Waliullah are the other candidates in the fight.
However, on April 17, during a Ram Navami procession in the Old City, Latha found herself in a spot when a video of her shooting off an imaginary arrow at the Siddiamber Bazar mosque went viral. Stung by the outcry, Latha was forced to issue an apology on social media platform X. Owaisi, though, was determined to squeeze every ounce of advantage out of the outrage, wondering aloud why the Election Commission was turning a blind eye.
“The people of Hyderabad have seen the BJP’s intentions…. Is this the ‘Viksit Bharat’ the BJP is talking about?” he asked. “Elections have their own place. What is more important is the peace of Telangana and Hyderabad…the brotherhood, fraternity prevailing here, which they (the BJP) want to destroy.” On a complaint, the Hyderabad police booked a case of deliberate and malicious intent to “outrage religious feelings” against Latha.
Still, analysts point to various factors behind the AIMIM being under pressure this time. For one, the party and the earlier Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government were quite supportive of each other. But the BRS’s electoral fortunes appear to be on a decline. Another is Muslim disaffection; they are staunch supporters, but there is a feeling that the AIMIM is not delivering on all its promises. Then, there’s the perception issue. The Karnataka assembly election last year was the fifth in a row in which the AIMIM drew a blank (it had contested two seats). That said, party candidates have won local polls in several statesâthey even had five MLAs in Bihar, though four decamped later.
The AIMIM is an intriguing political experiment, borne aloft and encumbered by its USP. Though anchored in Muslim identity, it has yet to gain wide acceptance and political legitimacy as the ‘party of the Indian Muslim’. The fragmented distribution of the community, which forms 14 per cent of India’s population (2011 Census), also makes a pan-Indian Muslim party unviable in the context of a Lok Sabha election.
Yet, there is no other leader who has so consistently raised issues and concerns of the Muslim minority. It’s also the only party (except for the Muslim League or IUML) that gives space to the rising political aspirations of the Muslim youth. Back home in Hyderabad, the perception about the party goes down to brass tacks, assessing what the MLAs and those in local bodies, including the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, have done for the community. The verdict: they have not done enough, especially to develop infrastructure in the Old City areas.Â
“The rise in the number of single mothers, increasing cases of substance and alcohol abuse, livelihood worries, all this is making the Muslim poor drift away from electoral politics,” says lawyer and social activist Afsar Jahan.
At the national level, there is no denying the “nuisance value” of the AIMIM for fellow anti-saffron formations, especially in areas with a high Muslim concentration. In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the Samajwadi Party lost at least seven seats in close contests when the AIMIM candidates polled more votes than the losing margin. This has led to Opposition parties referring to the AIMIM as the “BJP’s B team”, and is perhaps also the reason Owaisi has been kept out of the INDIA bloc.
Owaisi’s strength is being vocal on issues concerning the “rights of minorities”. He says the BJP has only hatred for the minorities, and points to how the party even refuses to mention the word “minorities” in its manifesto. “Just check the BJP’s advertisement on April 17 in various newspapers. When they talk about government loans or aid to start a business, it alludes to SC/STs and OBCs. The BJP refuses to even mention the word minorities, forget Muslims,” says an indignant Owaisi.
But it’s still no excuse for why his own legislators face charges of inaction. Hyderabad has stayed true to Owaisi all these years, but if the murmurs get louder, the AIMIM chief will have reason to worry.Â
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