Karimnagar/Gajwel/Medak/Hyderabad: As the Telangana election appears to go down to the wire, one section whose votes are expected to tilt the balance in the Congress or Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s favour are the Muslims.
In various opinion polls, the two parties have emerged as the favourites in the polls to be held Thursday.
Given that the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is also vying for the same pie, it is anybody’s guess which way the minority vote flows. Opinion about these three parties vary within families and religious bodies within the community as well as from constituency to constituency.
Awaiting passengers, near Hyderabad’s Nampally railway station, an AIMIM stronghold, auto-driver Mohd. Waseem, 45, says votes in his family are split between Congress and Asaduddin Owaisi’s party.
In Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s assembly turf Gajwel, Mohd. Yousuf Ali, 71, suspects KCR and BJP are hand-in-glove. “Votes for the BRS will help the BJP.”
“As Muslims, we have had no problem with KCR, but now we suspect he is working hand-in-glove with the BJP. When his daughter K. Kavitha was not arrested (in the alleged Delhi liquor scam), we smelt something fishy since all others including big leaders from AAP were arrested,” Yousuf contends.
His friend Mazar Ali, 53, though is not on the same page.
Such vote split scenarios are what the BJP is hoping to work to its favour in some constituencies such as Karimnagar when the poll results are out on 3 December. Former BJP state chief and sitting MP Bandi Sanjay is pitted against BRS minister and sitting MLA Gangula Kamalakar in this constituency. Purumalla Srinivas is the Congress candidate. All three are from the same community Munnuru Kapu, which is categorised as backward.
Exiting Karimnagar’s Aslami Masjid after the evening prayers, Mohd. Hussain, who is into automobile sales, says he is disappointed with Kamalakar. The 25-year-old flags the factor of unemployment, “having voted for BRS last time.”
Mohd. Shafiuddin, the mosque imam and proprietor of the Al Zaid Fragrance next door, is at pains explaining the secular credentials of the Congress. However, Shaik Saleem and another helper in the ittar shop are buoyant, guaranteeing the BRS win in the urban seat “with AIMIM support”.
Crucial minority votes
Muslims form about 13 percent of Telangana’s population. Their highest concentration is in Old Hyderabad, where the AIMIM retains all the seven assembly segments, and the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat of Owaisi.
While the AIMIM is expected to retain Charminar, Chandrayangutta, Malakpet, Karwan, Yakutpura, Bahadurpura and Nampally, it is fielding candidates in two more Hyderabad city segments – Jubilee Hills and Rajendranagar – this time. In other constituencies, Owaisi’s party has declared its support to KCR.
The AIMIM has targeted Rajendranagar, adjoining its stronghold, for some time because of the swelling Muslim vote there. As for Jubilee Hills, Congress candidate Mohd. Azharuddin alleges the AIMIM is a vote-cutter helping the BRS.
Of the total 119 seats, Muslim votes are treated as decisive — depending on the local equations — in another 20-25 seats. In 2018, a majority of these segments went to the BRS.
Latest trends and political observations show a major chunk of Muslim vote as drifting away from the ruling party. Muslim religious organisations too appear divided, with some backing the Congress and others the BRS.
Last week, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind released a list declaring its support not as a whole but to different parties’ assembly segment-wise — the Congress in 69 seats, the BRS in 41, the AIMIM in 7, and the BSP and the Left in 1 each.
The Congress in Telangana, its leaders say, managed to convey the message to the community that “the BRS was working with the BJP and every vote for KCR bolsters the BJP at the centre.”
“People who believe in safeguarding democracy and the Constitution, who want to see the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (syncretic culture) survive in the country, will go against the BJP and the BRS,” Congress Rajya Sabha MP and its national spokesperson Syed Naseer Hussain tells ThePrint.
As Rahul Gandhi has in his election rallies dubbed the BRS as the “BJP Rishtedaar Samiti”, the BRS and its chief are on an overdrive to counter the narrative of damaging their Muslim vote bank. KCR has reportedly addressed a whopping 96 public meetings, primarily targeting the Congress and its prime ministers like Indira Gandhi.
“Under whose watch the Babri Masjid was demolished? If you are secular, your deeds should reflect it,” KCR thundered two weeks ago in Nizamabad. He accused the Congress of treating the Muslims only as a vote-bank and made obscure references to Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Mohabbat ki Dukaan’ remark.
In his rallies in other Muslim influence segments too, KCR is reaching out to the community, saying “Hindus and Muslims are my two eyes.”
“Communal riots, curfews were the order of the day during the Congress rule (of the nineties). There have been none here since 2014. We have spent Rs 12,000 crore on minority welfare,” he said.
“There is a fanatic party which keeps thinking of digging up masjids, dargahs to stoke (communal) fires,” KCR thundered, attacking the BJP in rallies in seats near to Hyderabad on Monday, the penultimate day of the poll campaign.
Repeat of Karnataka effect?
Not everyone is convinced with the Congress attempts to replicate its Karnataka strategy for drawing back the Muslims, a large chunk of which was cornered by KCR in the last two elections.
Mohd. Moulana, an auto driver in Medak, is worried over the party guarantee of free RTC bus rides to women.
“If all women are given free bus rides, who will travel in my auto rickshaw? I will become jobless. We have seen the plight of auto drivers in Karnataka after the Congress guarantees were implemented there,” Moulana tells ThePrint.
“The KCR government has given us insurance, waived road taxes, and is providing Rs 1 lakh in Shaadi Mubarak (the Muslim version of Kalyana Lakshmi scheme providing financial assistance to poor families for the wedding of their daughters). We have no faith that the Congress will implement their guarantees,” the auto driver says.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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