MP civic elections: 4 Asaduddin Owaisi’s party’s candidates win, Congress calls AIMIM BJP’s core team
Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM opened its account in Madhya Pradesh with victories in four corporator seats in three cities. The party’s candidates won in Jabalpur, Burhanpur, and Khandwa. This was the party’s first election in the BJP stronghold.
In Jabalpur, Shama Parveen defeated Congress’s Saima Waseem by over 1,500 votes from ward number 49. In Jabalpur Municipal Corporation, Samreen defeated Congress’ Shabnam Firdaus. In Burhanpur, Rafiq Ahmed defeated Shahzad Noor by a margin of 156 votes from ward number two. In Khandwa, Shakira Bilal defeated Congress rival Noorjahan Begum from ward number 14.
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AIMIM deeply hurt the Congress party’s chances in at least two corporations. AIMIM’s mayoral candidate Kaniz Fatima polled 9,601 votes in Khandwa. The election was won by the BJP’s Amrita Yadav by a margin of 19,765 votes. In Burhanpur, AIMIM’s mayoral nominee Shaista Sohail Hashmi polled 10,274 votes. BJP’s Madhuri Patel scraped through with a thin margin of 542 votes by defeating Congress’ Shahnaz Bano.
Senior Congress leader Arun Yadav accused Owaisi’s party of helping BJP defeat his party in these two cities. He alleged the AIMIM receives funding to “play spoilsport in elections in the country”.
Owaisi, a popular Lok Sabha MP, had extensively campaigned in Khandwa, Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, and Burhanpur for the urban body polls.
The opposition calls AIMIM the BJP’s B-team. This is because AIMIM chips away at the anti-BJP Muslim votes from Congress’s vote bank. The party had hurt the parties like Congress and NCP in Maharashtra and RJD in Bihar. The party had won 5 seats in the Bihar Assembly election — all 5 MLAs recently defected to RJD.
Out of 11 mayoral posts, the BJP has bagged 5, the Congress and AAP one each. The results for the remaining seats are not declared yet.
With inputs from PTI
