Owaisi’s AIMIM Gains Toehold in Bihar, Defeats BJP in Kishanganj

Patna: The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi’s brand of politics has finally gained a toehold in Bihar, with the party recording its first victory in the state Assembly bye-elections by defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Kishanganj.

AIMIM candidate Qamrul Hoda defeated the ruling BJP's Sweetly Singh and pushed Congress to the third position, by winning with a margin of over 19,000 votes. Hoda got 54,641 votes against BJP's 35,258 votes and Congress candidate Saeeda Bano, who got 20,238 votes.

This is being seen as a setback for the National Democratic Alliance government led by the Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal (United) in the state ahead of next year’s Assembly polls.

Upbeat over the party’s first victory in Bihar, AIMIM state president Akhtarul Iman told NewsClick that this was a “mere beginning” and the party would “work hard to contest the next Assembly polls in 2020.”

According to reports, AIMIM has gaining ground not only in Kishanganj but neighbouring districts of Purnea, Araria and Katihar in the Seemanchal region. “We will be a force in the state after next Assembly polls”, said Iman.

Iman said that though he was defeated in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he got nearly three lakh votes that made it clear that the party’s popularity was growing in Kishanganj.

He said AIMIM had decided to expand its base in Bihar and would contest all seats in the 2020 Assembly elections.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls held in May, Kishanganj was the only parliamentary seat in Bihar that was won by the Congress in the opposition Grand Alliance, saving it from drawing a blank. But what has gone unreported is how this happened when polarisation in the name of Hindutva politics swept 39 Lok Sabha seats but failed in Kishanganj.

Notably, at the peak of religious polarisation, the people of Muslim-dominated Kishanganj also rejected the AIMIM by defeating its candidate. This waa despite the fact that AIMIM leader Owaisi had campaigned vigorously for him.

Congress candidate Mohd Jawed won the seat by defeating the JD-U candidate Syed Mahmood Ashraf. Interestingly, this was one seat that also rejected Narendra Modi's ‘tsunami’, as a BJP leader termed it.

Kishanganj is widely seen as a stronghold of Congress. The BJP has won the seat only once when its candidate, Shahnawaz Hussain, was elected in 1999.

In the 2015 Bihar Assembly polls, Muslims had outrightly rejected AIMIM, which contested six Muslim-dominated seats in the Seemanchal region. That was AIMIM's first entry into Bihar's electoral politics but Muslims preferred the secular Grand Alliance, led by Rashtriya Janata Dal.

For Muslims in Kishanganj, the dominant mood in the Lok Sabha poll was to defeat the BJP-led NDA and they felt that Congress was the only choice for them, as the party has a strong network in this backward and poor area.

Flood-prone Kishanganj, a part of the Seemanchal region, has some of the worst development statistics not only in Bihar but in India. It has a per capita annual income of Rs 9,928 (as per figures of State Economic Survey 2018-19) with a literacy rate of 57.04%, while women’s illiteracy rate is as high as 84%. Nearly 60% of the population is below poverty line and the constituency has high infant mortality rate. The education scenario is also dismal, with the drop-out rate after high school as high as 98%.