Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) performance in Uttar Pradesh elections is being considered as a big failure. The party managed to bag just 4.51 lakh or 0.49% of votes in the country’s largest state with 15.02 crore voters.
The Hyderabad-based party contested on 95 seats but failed to win any of the seats in the state. Apart from Mubarakpur seat in Azamgarh district, AIMIM candidates lost their deposits in all of the seats the party contested. In Mubarakpur seat the party had fielded two-term sitting BSP MLA Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali who joined AIMIM in November last year.
However, a closer look at poll data shows that even in its loss, the party successfully damaged Samajwadi Party-led alliance candidates’ prospects in at least 7 seats and came closer to mar the Akhilesh-led party’s chances in few others. In a way even though it scored a duck, it succeeded in dividing Muslim votes in as many as seven seats.
Another silver lining for the Hyderabad-based party was that it performed much better than the Congress party in the seats it contested. In the 95 seats where both the parties were contesting, AIMIM candidates scored over Congress nominees in 58 seats; In just 36 seats Congress candidates remained ahead of Owaisi’s candidates.
Overall, in these 95 seats, Congress got 3,13,577 votes while AIMIM secured 4,50,929 votes i.e. 1,38,533 or 44% more votes than the Grand Old Party.
Besides, the Party also slightly improved its performance from the last assembly polls when it had secured a little over two lakh votes with 0.24% share. This time around it has raised its vote share to 0.49%.
The Party founded in 1920 has of late started making electoral moves outside its home base Hyderabad and has a mixed success. In 2019 Lok Sabha polls it won the Aurangabad seat in Maharashtra, its first seat outside Hyderabad. Later in the state assembly polls it retained two seats.
In 2020, it won 5 assembly seats in Bihar. However, the party could not do much in the assembly polls held last year in Bengal or Tamil Nadu.
With inputs from News18
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