Summary:
Ahmedabad, Dec 9 (PTI) The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM seem to have dented the Congress"s sway over votes of minorities in Gujarat in the Assembly polls, bringing down the main Opposition party"s vote margin considerably in various seats across the state.
The minorities, primarily Muslims, have been loyal voters of the Congress for the last several decades, especially after the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
Assembly polls were held on December 1 and 5, and votes were counted on December 8.
According to Congress sources, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on most occasions post the 2002 riots, has made electoral calculations keeping in mind consolidation of Hindu votes irrespective of castes.
This prompted the main Opposition party to secure its minority votes, one of the last components of the Congress"s old strategy of KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) social engineering, which once used to be its winning formula in the state, they said.
However, the entry of the AAP and the Hyderabad-headquartered All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has not only disturbed Congress"s minority vote bank but has also helped the ruling BJP, which did not field a single Muslim candidate in the elections, at the cost of the Congress.
In the 2022 Assembly polls, traditional political parties fielded very few Muslim candidates in Gujarat, which has a 182-member Assembly.
The Congress had fielded six Muslim candidates, while the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP gave tickets to three members of the minority community.
The AIMIM contested 13 Assembly seats and fielded Muslim nominees on 12 of them.
The AIMIM might have failed to win a single seat and the AAP might have won just five, but they derailed the Congress"s prospects and vote share in numerous seats by splitting their traditional votes.
In the minority dominated Dariapur seat, considered a Congress bastion, sitting Congress MLA Gyasuddin Shaikh lost to BJP"s Kaushik Jain by a margin of 5,243 votes.
Shaikh polled 55,847 votes, whereas his nearest BJP rival bagged 61,090 ballots.
The winning difference was made by AAP and AIMIM candidates, who polled 4,164 and 1,771 votes, respectively.
In Jamalpur-Khadia, the Congress"s Imran Khedawala got a third consecutive term, but with a reduced mandate of 58,487 votes, down from 75,000 in 2017.
AIMIM"s state president Sabir Kabliwala bagged 15,677 votes and the AAP 5,887 in the constituency in Ahmedabad district.
In the Bapunagar seat, sitting Congress MLA Himmatsinh Patel lost to BJP"s Dineshsinh Kushwaha by a margin of 12,070 votes.
AAP and Samajwadi Party"s (SP) Muslim candidates made the difference in margin between the Congress and the BJP.