Kolkata, Dec 31 (IANS) A political alliance based on religious tenets, as called by former Trinamool Congress MLA and builder of a Babri Masjid replica in West Bengal, Humayun Kabir, may cost West Bengal's ruling party dearly in Muslim-dominated Assembly seats next year – as Bihar’s Seemanchal experience shows.
Kabir’s unabashed proposal for the consolidation of Muslim votes will prompt a polarisation, which may even favour West Bengal’s principal Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), given allegations of “appeasement politics” against Trinamool supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The recently concluded Assembly election in Bihar saw the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) winning five and narrowly missing two seats, after fielding 25 candidates.
Being reportedly spurned by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav despite several outreaches, Owaisi’s party went solo in Bihar, concentrating its efforts in Seemanchal, where Muslims constitute a substantive proportion of the electorate.
It augured well for the AIMIM, as it did in 2020, when the party won an equal number of seats. Significantly, it recovered from the earlier setbacks suffered from the defection of AIMIM winners and staged a comeback.
Among Muslim-dominated constituencies in the Seemanchal, only the Congress managed to win one at Kishanganj. Neither the RJD nor the Left, despite their political footprints in the region, could succeed given the vote consolidation.
In Balrampur, AIMIM lost by only 389 votes to BJP ally Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), while Mahagathbandhan’s CPI(ML)L garnered 79,141.
In Thakurganj constituency, the AIMIM came behind Janata Dal (United) by 8,822 votes, pushing the RJD that collected a mandate of 60,036. Whereas in Pranpur, while the RJD candidate came behind the BJP’s by a margin of 7,752 votes, the AIMIM polled 30,163, clearly pointing to a split in mandates.
Thus, AIMIM’s surge split the minority vote and cost the Mahagathbandhan in several seats because the Opposition could not convert Muslim plurality into a consolidated bloc against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The Seemanchal experience indicates that if Humayun Kabir’s Janata Unnayan Party (JUP), AIMIM, and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) coordinate, then local consolidation is possible, hurting the poll prospects for the rest.
The ISF was founded by the Furfura Sharif Sufi shrine’s cleric, Peerzada Abbas Siddiqui, ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections to ensure “social justice” for Muslims and Dalits in the state.
It contested the last Assembly elections in alliance with the Left and Congress and managed to win one seat, while the partners got none. However, poll prospects will depend on such Muslim parties coordinating to nominate one candidate per seat where they can consolidate Muslim votes.
As indicated by Kabir on several occasions, that he will emerge the kingmaker, if not the king himself, such an arrangement in even half of West Bengal’s 294 Assembly constituencies can win them that key.
Kabir himself is aiming to nominate JUP candidates in at least 180 seats. He too is said to have taken note of AIMIM’s Bihar performance, though he is yet to organise his party on the ground and confirm an alliance.
Considering the Seemanchal experience, a formal pact among JUP, AIMIM, and ISF would change the arithmetic; there still exists the uncertainty of an uneven split in minority votes or the personal charisma of leaders of other parties prevailing at the hustings.
The favourable odds, however, have led the BJP to allege that Kabir will support the Trinamool post-poll, even as Mamata Banerjee tries to woo Hindu voters with a sudden surge in the construction of high-profile temples in the state.
--IANS
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