With an eye on the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections, the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) launched a unit here on Tuesday. The party announced the appointment of a six-member core committee ahead of the formation of a full-fledged State body by July-end.
The committee will be headed by Jamil Khan, owner of a chain of private schools, who hails from Jeoli village in Sikar district’s Laxmangarh tehsil. Mr. Khan belongs to an influential family of the region and his grandfather, the late Col. (retd.) Jabodi Khan, had contested the Assembly election against former Home Minister Mathura Das Mathur from Nagaur district’s Deedwana constituency in 1977.
Incidentally, Laxmangarh is the Assembly constituency represented by Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Govind Singh Dotasra. Another member of the AIMIM’s core committee, Javed Ali, a lawyer, also hails from Khinwasar village situated in Laxmangarh tehsil.
‘Scope for third parties’
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who announced the launch of the party’s Rajasthan unit at a press conference here, said there was an “immense scope and space” for third parties to emerge in the State, as there was a “huge vacuum” in the political map dominated by the two mainstream parties and the people were looking for options.
“The time for the narrative that there can be no third party, other than the Congress and the BJP in Rajasthan, is over... A saturation level has been reached here,” Mr. Owaisi said. He said the AIMIM would work for growth of political leadership and raise the demand for justice not just for Muslims, but for all marginalised sections, facing discrimination, prejudice and intolerance in the society.
Rules out alliance
The Hyderabad MP said the AIMIM would fight the 2023 State Assembly election with full strength and ruled out any alliance with the ruling Congress. “The decision for an alliance will be taken at the right time after considering all circumstances,” he said, while affirming that the core committee would strengthen the organisation and he would continue visiting the State to attend public meetings.
Asked about the AIMIM’s influence in about 40 Assembly seats with a significant number of Muslim voters, Mr. Owaisi said his party would not restrict itself to the Muslim-dominated constituencies alone, but would play its role to represent all sections. “There is no Muslim vote-bank in India. Muslims cannot change the government in the Hindi heartland,” he said.
The AIMIM has contested elections at some seats in various State Assembly elections in the recent years. Among them are Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The Hyderabad-based party has five MLAs in Bihar and two in Maharashtra, while it has seven MLAs in Telangana and is in an alliance with the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS).
Other members of the core committee in Rajasthan are Imran Khan (Alwar), Qasim Zuberi (Tonk), Mujahid Ali Naqvi (Jaipur) and Naushaba Parveen (Jaipur). Sikar-based political analyst Ashfaq Kayamkhani said the first adverse impact of the core committee becoming active would be on PCC chief, Mr. Dotasra, as two of its members were from his Assembly constituency.
