Hyderabad: As the curtain came down on the nominations phase of the Jubilee Hills by-poll in Telangana on Tuesday, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is extending a tacit support to the Congress party by sitting out the elections.
This is at a time when AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi is fielding his candidates in Bihar, a move seen as harming the Mahaghatbandhan prospects in the next month’s state elections.
The Jubilee Hills by-poll, necessitated by the demise of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA Maganti Gopinath in June, is scheduled 11 November.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, the AIMIM chief asserted that there can be no connection, or comparison between a state election where a new government will be formed and a by-poll with no consequences on the political circumstances in Telangana.
Owaisi claimed that despite his party writing to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Left party leaders for becoming part of the Mahaghatbandhan and later writing to Tejashwi Yadav seeking to contest on six seats, there was no favourable response.
“So, we’ll fight on our own, right? We had already won five seats before. We are in the Bihar fray in alliance with Chandrashekhar Azad and Swami Prasad Maurya’s parties. Don’t connect a by-poll to a state assembly election. I do not want to comment on such immature comparisons,” Owaisi said.
The AIMIM has formed a third-front alliance with Azad’s Azad Samaj Party and Swami Prasad Maurya’s Apni Janata Party to contest in Bihar.
“No candidate of AIMIM is in the (Jubilee Hills by-poll) contest. If anyone, (be it an) Independent candidate, is using our party name, symbols, we’ll complain to the EC,” Owaisi said with reference to a Muslim candidate allegedly claiming the AIMIM’s support through some videos.
Though not announcing it emphatically, Owaisi’s has been talking in support of Congress candidate Naveen Yadav, who was once an AIMIM candidate in the constituency. In 2014, AIMIM’s Yadav came the runner-up, while Maganti of the BRS won.
To media queries at the party headquarters, Owaisi said, “he appeals the Jubilee Hills public, who supported the BRS for the last 10 years, to elect a young Naveen to see development.”
In 2018 polls, when the AIMIM did not contest in Jubilee Hills, an assembly segment in central Hyderabad with over one lakh Muslim votes, Yadav stood as an independent and came third. Maganti won again. The BRS leader scored a hat-trick in 2023. Yadav, however, did not contest that year.
Yadav filed his nomination papers Friday. He later met with Owaisi during a visit in the constituency.
Owaisi then told reporters that he advised Yadav to take an inclusive approach, reaching out to people of all communities who together form the 3.98 lakh electorate of Jubilee Hills.
In a public meeting recently, the AIMIM chief said that the constituency witnessed little development or improvement in civic amenities under Maganti despite the BRS being in power for two terms. He had then urged the voters to take a “good decision and support a young and local candidate.”
This time, the BRS has fielded Maganti’s widow Sunitha. BJP’s candidate is Lankala Deepak Reddy, who came third in the 2023 polls.
Meanwhile, BRS leaders are saying that AIMIM’s contradictory stand in Bihar and here is confusing people.
“Voters are confused over the AIMIM’s election strategies and ideology since it is trying to help the BJP in Bihar indirectly by fielding its candidates, while not doing so in Jubilee Hills and supporting the ruling Congress,” BRS MLA K.P.Vivekanand said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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