All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi announced on January 3 that his party will contest the upcoming West Bengal Assembly polls with influential Muslim cleric Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui.
The development, first political move by the Hyderabad MP in poll-bound West Bengal, could spell trouble for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) as it has the potential to split the Muslim votes and thereby benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), political analysts said.
Siddiqui, who represents the revered Muslim pilgrimage site Furfura Sharif in Hooghly, had earlier announced to launch his own political party to take on the TMC, the party that he has been supporting for last ten years.
Clerics from Furfura Sharif have influence in four South Bengal districts of Hooghly, Howrah, North and South 24 Parganas, according to political analysts. The BJP has been trying to strengthen its presence in these areas.
Siddiqui has been drawing large crowds in his recent anti-TMC meetings in the region, urging Muslims to not support Mamata Banerjee’s party in the upcoming elections. The AIMIM has some presence in Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, and Cooch Behar districts of north and central Bengal, which it intends to strengthen in coming days.
'B-team of the BJP'
After winning five of the 20 seats it contested in Bihar elections last year, Owaisi's party was accused of helping the BJP-led alliance win the polls, a charge that has dogged the AIMIM for long. Even in West Bengal, where elections to the 294-member assembly are due in a few months, TMC leaders, including MP Sougata Roy, have called the AIMIM a "B-team of the BJP" that would eat into anti-saffron camp votes, a charge refuted by Owaisi.
"Owaisi is well aware that Muslims here are mostly Bengali-speaking, and won't support him. He is trying to forge ties with Abbas Siddiqui, but that won't yield any result. Muslims in Bengal stand firmly by Mamata Banerjee," Roy has said.
The experts, however, think otherwise.
“Owaisi was not a factor in Bengal until last week. However, his meeting with Abbas Siddiqui of Furfura Sharif and the announcement that they will come together is an interesting development. Together they can impact voting patterns in some of the constituencies in Southern districts of Bengal, in particular. They may win few seats, but damage the TMC in few others as well,” said Dr Mohammad Reyaz, Head of the Mass Communication Department at Kolkata-based Aliah University.
The clerics from Furfura Sharif had been close to the CPI(M) until 2006 when the Sachar Committee report revealed the poor situation of Muslims in West Bengal. In 2011, they switched their support to the TMC.
The Muslim votes
Of late, Owaisi is seen as a leader of Muslims, though he says he is not. His poll plank is playing up what many call a growing resentment against the ‘secular’ parties - the Congress, RJD, SP, TMC, and the NCP - that he says have enjoyed the Muslim community's backing over the years but failed to uplift the community.
He largely targets Muslim voters. In Bihar, for example, the five seats that the AIMIM won from the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region of the state - Baisi, Amnour, Bahadurganj, Kochadhaman and Jokihat - have a Muslim population ranging between 50-70 percent of the electorate. In West Bengal, his first political move has already left analysts guessing.
Read: How Asaduddin Owaisi is emerging as the rising star of Muslim politics in India
“There is no denying the fact that the BJP and the AIMIM help each other mutually by the kind of politics they do. The BJP comes up with own narrative, the AIMIM comes with a counter. Furfura Sharif has committed followers in 20-25 seats. It will help the AIMIM,” Prof Afroz Alam, Head of the Department of Political Science at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, told Moneycontrol.
Muslims, 27 per cent of votes in West Bengal, have traditionally voted for the Congress and the Left Front till 2011. In the last ten years, Muslims largely backed the TMC. In 2016 assembly elections, 50 percent Muslims supported the TMC. In 2011 assembly polls, 41 percent Muslims supported the TMC. In 2019 general elections, 65 percent of Muslims voted for the TMC.
Complementary role
Owaisi and Siddiqui may play a complementary role for each other, experts said. While the TMC calls Owaisi an outsider, Siddiqui will be a Bengali face by his side. AIMIM leaders speak Urdu, an impediment in connecting with Bengali speaking Muslims who constitute 90 percent of the community’s population.
Dr Reyaz also said it would be too early to predict the actual impact since many other influential Muslim clerics such as Siddiqullah Chowdhury, state president of the Jamiat Ulema Hind, were still with the TMC.
“Other influential clerics too may urge to vote for secular forces in this election. The election is still months away, and there have been reports of Abbas Siddiqui also in negotiations with the TMC. So saying anything definitive at this moment would not be right, he said.
The Jamiat Ulema Hind and the Furfura Sharif are two major religious institutions that can have a sway over voting patterns of Muslims of West Bengal.
The TMC’s Muslim leaders were, however, confident that the community was behind Mamata Banerjee. “It is no secret that the party from Hyderabad is going to help the BJP in the polls. Muslims will support the TMC,” said TMC MLA Shaukat Mulla last week.
Also read: West Bengal Assembly Polls 2021: Rivals in Kerala, Congress and Left are allies in Bengal
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