Barackface: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Bihar: Advantage BJP

Right now it looks like the BJP will win Bihar. There appears to be a groundswell in favor of Modi. And this is a big deal. If the BJP wins Bihar now, Uttar Pradesh in 2017 will prove to be a cakewalk. With Bihar and UP in the kitty, the BJP will finally tilt the balance in the Upper House in its favor, and Modi might move much faster with the reforms.

Modi winning Bihar now will give new winds to his administration in Delhi. It will be like he won a national election all over again. He will get rejuvenated.

A Bihar victory would make UP a done deal. Expect the BJP to start taking serious looks at the North-East, and the South. Places like Tamilnadu might actually come into play in a few years. That is surprising for a party that might have been national in vote share, but was, for all intents and purposes, practically a regional party only a few years back.

The most popular politician in the world keeps on delivering.

Kejriwal's non performance has hurt Nitish. Go figure.

Unable to combat BJP, parties blame me: Owaisi

In Uttar Pradesh, for the first time since Independence, no Muslim MP has been elected. In Bihar too, the BJP swept the polls, I hadn’t contested in these polls, so how come these so-called secular parties lost? ..... “These people are looking to protect certain vote banks as a feudal fiefdom, whereas I’m the one who has everything to lose, like I lost my Masjid [Babri], I lost my people in communal riots, my way of life is being threatened by the BJP and the RSS. To accuse me of aiding the BJP, that too for pecuniary gain, is laughable,” he said. “If that was the case, then why did the BJP win in Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana? Was the AIMIM contesting? In Maharashtra, [where his party won 2 Assembly seats] we got 5 lakh votes for our 24 candidates, the rest of 55 lakh votes polled among the Muslim community are to be accounted for,” he said.

Have the scales tilted in BJP’s favour in Bihar?

The RJD leader must also be conscious of the potency of the Yadavs, perhaps the most formidable caste group in the Hindi belt, which was evident in Uttar Pradesh, when the SP came back from the dead to win eight of the 11 by-elections after its massive setback in the general election in which the BJP won 72 of the 80 parliamentary seats.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Owaisi, Like Atal, Is A Great Parliamentarian

Who’s afraid of Owaisi? Congress, Lalu, Mulayam, Mamata …

For the first time since the Muslim League migrated to Pakistan, a political party with undiluted Muslim credentials is making a credible bid for support on an allIndia basis. ....... Its ambitions are pan-Indian. It is a gathering (majlis) of Muslims on the platform of unity (ittehad). Its leader, Asaduddin Owaisi, an MP , refuses to be embarrassed by his focus, or faith, or his route map in the competitive jungle of democratic aspiration. ...... Aurangabad’s just-concluded municipal elections. The MIM won 26 of 54 seats it contested in the 113-member body to become the third largest party after BJP and Shiv Sena. Congress slipped from 19 seats to 11; NCP from 11 to two. In the recent assembly bypoll in Mumbai, which Congress heavyweight Narayan Rane lost, MIM got most of the Muslim votes. Something is happening. ....... There has been no Muslim leader of Indian Muslims since Maulana Azad, and he was a spent force by 1947. ........ There were only 11, 19 and 20 Muslim MPs in the first three Lok Sabhas, or in the decade when Congress under Nehru had a virtual monopoly and could get, as was often said, a lamppost elected. This was between 2 to 4% representation for 14% of India. ...... In Bengal, Muslims have around 30% of the vote. Do they get 30% of MPs even under the Left and Trinamool Congress? Try another joke. ....

The present Lok Sabha has only 22 Muslim members.
...... The young are tired of clichés. They want education. Their habitat and skills are largely urban rather than rural. They want jobs. They are starved for employment. ..... Five MIM councillors in Aurangabad are Dalit. The MIM has shown the capacity not only to pull voters in its direction but also to transfer votes to its non-Muslim candidates. ..... The MIM seems to have acquired some critical mass in Maharashtra but we will have to see whether its leader, Owaisi, has that willpower to carry his momentum into the Hindi heartland, and Bengal, which is where his future will be shaped.