Asaduddin Owaisi conducts Paidal Daura in Aurangabad in view of forthcoming civic body polls…!!!

Aurangabad 17 April, 2015: Today AIMIM Supremo Barrister Asaduddin Owaisi conducted Paidal Daura in ?Aurangabad?.

Buoyed after winning two seats in 2014 assembly election in Maharashtra – one of it being the Aurangabad (Central) seat – the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is now aiming at the forthcoming civic body polls in the city by declaring to contest 60 of the 113 wards.
The election to Aurangabad Municipal Corporation is due on April 22.
This will be AIMIM’s maiden attempt to try its luck at the urban body polls by contesting such large number of seats, six months after its maiden foray in the state assembly polls. The party already has 11 corporators in the Nanded civic body.
Interestingly, the party is enthused with the support it is getting from SCs and dalits and hence decided to contest even from the saffron bastions – Gulmandi, Raja Bazar, Khadkeshwar and Aurangpura.

Earlier in February, as many as 15 local leaders including many corporators from different parties has joined AIMIM. Among these were 10 dalits belonging to Panther Republic Party (PRP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Dalit Bahujan Mahasangh and Bheem Shakti.

MIM to appoint Dalit mayor if it wins Aurangabad civic polls…!!!

Aurangabad: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) has decided to appoint a Dalit face as Aurangabad city mayor if it manages to win this month’s civic elections.

Asaduddin Owaisi, party’s president was in city on Friday for campaigning when he announced that if his party gets majority in the upcoming civic body elections, the mayor and standing committee chairman will be from the Dalit community.
MIM is contesting April 22 civic polls from more than 60 wards out of 113 total wards in the city.
During the address on Friday, Owaisi appealed to the Dalits and minorities to refrain from acting as bonded labours of so called secular parties, who terrorizes them saying that if they are not voted, the saffron parties would come to power.
Owaisi came down heavily on the BJP, Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP for poor infrastructure in the city as well for a series of privatizations, including the controversial parallel water pipeline project.

Owaisi also threatened Congress-NCP combine to not make false allegations against him and his party by terming the MIM to be the ‘B’ team of the BJP and Sena.
“We did a favour by not contesting the Lok Sabha elections. However, if they do not refrain from making false allegations against us, we will contest the next general elections,” he threatened.
He cited reports of the survey conducted by his team and said, “There are 62 wards in the city without proper drainage system, 73 wards lack adequate drinking water facility and 64 wards do not have proper sanitation. The number of people visiting orthopaedic doctors has increased manifold in the city and those ruling the city are responsible for it.”

Of the 113 wards that are scheduled to go to the body polls, 22 are reserved for SC community.

The rise of AIMIM in Maharashtra…!!!

I still remember a telephonic chat I had with the president of All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Asaduddin Owaisi, on October 16, 2012, after his party had won 11 seats in the municipal elections in Nanded, central Maharashtra. He had sounded a warning bell by wresting these seats from Congress stalwart and former CM Ashok Chavan’s backyard.
“My party will continue to torment the Congress as long as it targets innocent Muslims in the name of terrorism and denies the backward community all-inclusive development. Congress has failed to understand the undercurrent and growing resentment in Muslims. We have been working hard in the erstwhile Hyderabad State region that includes Marathwada (central Maharashtra). We have tasted such thumping victory for the first time in the region, and we will make dents in the Congress in the coming years,” Owaisi had told me then.
The Hyderabad MP’s warning is now showing greater effects. In fact, we saw it coming in last October’s Assembly polls, when AIMIM bagged two seats — one each in Aurangabad and Byculla. Six months after the Assembly polls, the party struck a similar chord to claim 25 seats in the Aurangabad municipal polls, though it was not able to save its poll deposit in the Bandra East Assembly by-poll a couple of weeks ago. AIMIM’s notable achievement in Aurangabad is that it got five non-Muslim corporators elected, thus partially negating the notion that only the Muslim community stands by it.
Aurangabad saw AIMIM taking local Dalits (Hindu and Buddhists) in its fold successfully. And this Dalit-Muslim chemistry is going to pose a real challenge to the depleted Congress. We are not counting the NCP here, because it has at least 40-50 winning segments that are controlled by its regional satraps. The Congress does not enjoy NCP-like luxury; it has been relying heavily on Dalit and Muslim votes for the past several decades.
In doldrums after their crushing defeat in both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, Congress leaders now curse their fate. They hope the ‘Modi mania’ to subside gradually and the BJP to falter in the matters of governance, so that they get a chance to bounce back. However, going by AIMIM’s upsurge, the Congress may not be able to woo the Muslim and Dalit communities anytime soon. The Owaisi brothers are expected to storm many other Muslim-dominated towns in the state in the forthcoming local self-government elections, where Dalits, too, play a decisive role.
Congress leaders, who were earlier blamed for facilitating AIMIM’s entry into the state, are now targeting the BJP-Sena for encouraging AIMIM. They say that the ideologies of the two — the AIMIM and the BJP-Sena — are supplementary to each other and help in polarising votes. Surprisingly, Congressmen are hard pressed for answers when one asks them why their party didn’t try hard enough to make strong leaders among Muslims. The only exception was the late A R Antulay, who had won Indira Gandhi’s trust to become the state’s only Muslim CM. He enjoyed a brief tenure, after which the Muslims were denied top positions and influential departments in the state government. The Samajwadi Party first tapped Congress’ failure successfully in this regard, and, now it’s AIMIM’s turn to thrive on the resentment among Muslims.
AIMIM’s next targets are Mumbai, Thane, Bhiwandi, Malegaon and Dhule, where it has a sizeable following. Other than the Congress, AIMIM has also damaged the pro-Muslim Samajwadi Party, whose presence is also on the wane. Muslims seem to have accepted AIMIM as a formidable alternative at a time when the BJP and Shiv Sena are in power and the Congress is condemned.
AIMIM’s success also raises big concerns, especially in sensitive places like Mumbai where the Hindu-Muslim rift exists, but has remained largely invisible since the post-Babri riots. Laced with equally fundamental sensitivities, parties like Shiv Sena are not expected to sit idle. It was the Sena which made the most of anti-Muslim propaganda in central Maharashtra, where AIMIM found its first foothold. The Sena has benefited in a large way from AIMIM in the Aurangabad elections and Bandra (East) Assembly by-polls. The BJP, too, has these factors calculated in its scheme of things for the future.

Owaisi’s MIM scores big in Aurangabad, India polls…!!!

COurtesy : Arab News
The Hyderabad-based Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party has performed impressively in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) elections winning 25 out of the 53 seats it contested. Led by MP Asaduddin Owaisi, it emerged as the second-largest party in the 113-member civic body. The results were declared on Thursday.
The party, which vows to empower the downtrodden and underprivileged, was contesting the municipal elections for the first time. The party was spurred on by a fabulous performance during assembly elections last year when two MIM candidates, Imtiaz Jaleel (Aurangabad Central) and Waris Pathan (Byculla, Mumbai), emerged victorious.
The Shiv Sena and the BJP, which rule the state of Maharashtra of which Aurangabad is one of the major cities, emerged as overall winners. They contested the elections separately but are expected to form an alliance. Shiv Sena won 29 seats and the BJP 22. With the help of smaller parties, such as the Republican Party of India (RPI), and other independents, the two biggest parties are in a comfortable position to fill the three important posts of mayor, deputy mayor and standing committee chairman.
The MIM’s handsome win has proved that its victory in the assembly elections was no flash in the pan. The Congress, at whose expense the MIM scored big, managed to win only 10 seats. Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was reduced to one digit. Significantly, the Congress managed to beat senior MIM leader Javed Qureshi who was in the eye of a storm for allegedly mishandling ticket distribution.
The MIM tally would have touched 30 had some rebels not contested against the official candidates. Nearly five of the corporators who won as independents were MIM functionaries. They are expected to join the party, swelling its ranks.
The Owaisi brothers stayed put in the city in the run-up to the elections, delivering hard-hitting speeches and nipping in the bud any rebellion from disgruntled members.
Asaduddin Owaisi, who has repeatedly asserted during newspaper interviews and television talk shows that his party was not just about Muslims, scored another significant political point during the AMC elections.
Out of the 53 seats it contested, the MIM fielded 12 non-Muslim candidates, mostly underprivileged Hindus referred to as Dalits. Of these 12, five non-Muslims — Sangeeta Waghule, Lata Nikhalge, Gangadhar Dhage, Sarita Borde and Vikas Edke — emerged victorious.
“This takes the sting out of the opposition campaign that MIM is a Muslim-only party,” said a political analyst while speaking to Arab News on Thursday. “In the past, the MIM has been instrumental in facilitating the election of Dalits as mayors of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, a fact that MIM rivals try conveniently to forget.”
“The MIM performance shows that people want development and are tired of the false promises made by other parties,” Jaleel was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India. “The results also show that people’s power is greater than money power.”
The party will now eye the Mumbai municipal corporation elections which are due in 2017.

MIM’s impressive performance in the Aurangabad municipal elections is bad news for the Congress and NCP…!!!

The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance would be pleased with the results of the Aurangabad municipal corporation. The alliance has managed to win 58 out of the total 113 seats. But more than that the saffron combine would be thrilled at the fact that they have finally achieved the kind of communal polarisation they have wanted in the state. Asaduddin Owaisi’s Majlis-e-Ittehadul managed an impressive performance winning 23 seats, reducing the Congress and NCP to 10 and 3 respectively.

It is evident that while the BJP-Sena grabbed a huge chunk of the Hindu vote, a majority of Muslim have shifted from the Congress and the NCP to the MIM. In Owaisi and the MIM, the BJP-Sena finally have a figure whom they can construct as Afzal Khan in Chhatrapati Shivaji’s Maharashtra.

This was evident in the manner in which the saffron combine, Sena in particular, spewed venom at Owaisi in the recent past. Even Sanjay Raut’s “disenfranchise Muslims” demand was written in the context of the MIM’s rise in the state.

But will MIM be able to replicate its success in other states as well or will its expansion outside its pocket borough of Hyderabad remain restricted to Maharashtra alone?

Owaisi’s ambitions aren’t as grandiose as they are made out to be. He doesn’t seek, as some commentators have asserted, to become the sole spokesperson of the Muslim community. The use of the term “sole spokesman” is itself loaded, associated as it is with the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Even in its bastion Hyderabad, MIM has taken decisions that one wouldn’t expect from a “Muslim party”. For instance, on three occasions it has made Hindu leaders the mayor of Hyderabad.

His plan seems a more limited one: to take up cudgels on behalf of the Muslim community in states where the “secular” parties have completely failed to safeguard their interests.

Maharashtra was a perfect place for such an expansion.

The erstwhile Congress-NCP government in the state had become unpopular with the Muslim community. According to a paper prepared the All India Milli Council in 2012, Maharashtra was ranked second, after Madhya Pradesh, in terms of “arbitrary arrest of Muslim youth on terror charges”. Even though the Congress-NCP made a last ditch effort to support ahead of the Vidhan Sabha elections by approving 5 per cent reservation for Muslims, it didn’t seem to have cut much ice with the community. And the BJP struck down the quota soon after coming to power, adding insult to the community’s injury.

Given the BJP-Sena’s open hostility towards Muslims, with the scrapping of the quota and the beef ban that has harmed the livelihood of lakhs of people, it is hardly surprising that many Muslims in Maharashtra see Owaisi as someone who will fight on their behalf.

MIM made its first impact in Maharashtra politics in 2012, by winning 11 out of 81 seats in the Nanded Municipal Corporation. In last year’s Vidhan Sabha elections, MIM won two seats Aurangabad Central and Byculla and dented the Congress in a number of other Muslim dominated constituencies. The fact that Muslims in Nanded and Aurangabad are culturally similar to Hyderabadi Muslims also worked in MIM’s favour.

These favourable factors might not exist in other states, thereby constricting the MIM’s expansion efforts and this is something that Owaisi seems to recognise.

For instance, Bihar isn’t a priority as the Muslim in the state are certain to rally behind the reunited Janata Parivar duo of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad. It shelved its plans in Delhi ahead of the Vidhan Sabha elections, perhaps expecting a complete consolidation of Muslims behind AAP.

Owaisi’s next priority seems to be Uttar Pradesh where the Samajwadi Party government did lose its credibility among Muslims to some extent after the Muzaffarnagar riots. The state government is clearly rattled as it denied Owaisi permission to hold rallies in Azamgarh, Meerut and Allahabad.

Surprise victory for MIM in Aurangabad…!!!

The Hyderabad-based All India Majli-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) led by the Owaisi brothers – Asaduddin Owaisi and Akbaruddin Owaisi – has sprung a surprise by winning 26 of the total 113 wards in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance got 52 seats, Others/Independents 23 and NCP 3. The MIM became the second largest party in Aurangabad, the headquarters of the Marathwada region. Shiv Sena’s five-term MP Chandrakant Khaire leads the party in Aurangabad.
For MIM it is a major victory, after it won 11 of the 81 seats in Nanded municipal polls on its debut in 2012. In the 2014 Maharashtra Legisaltive Assembly elections, the MIM won two seats – Imtiyaz Jaleel from Aurangabad Central and Waris Pathan from Byculla.

“It is wrong to say that we are fanning communal issues. We have given tickets to all sections of the society, including Dalits and they have won the elections….let me make it clear once again that the MIM stands for secularism and uniform development,” Pathan said. “The Sena-BJP would have to work now as we would be sitting in the opposition,” Jaleel said.

The NCP, however, said the Shiv Sena and MIM had a hidden understanding. In the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the NCP unit spearheaded by former excise minister Ganesh Naik won 52 of the 111 wards.
The Shiv Sena and BJP alliance won 38 seats, Congress 10 and Others/Independents 5. “We will reach the magic figure of 56…some rebels are in touch with me, we also want the Congress to stay with us,” Naik said. After his loss in the Vidhan Sabha elections, there were reports that Naik would switch over to the BJP, however, that did not happen and the results now come as a major boost to the Naik family. The Sena-BJP also won the municipal councils of Badlapur and Ambernath in the outskirt of Mumbai city. In municipal council of Bokhar in Nanded district, the hometown of former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, the Congress won 12 of the total
19 seats. – See more at: http://m.deccanherald.com/content/473386/surprise-victory-mim-aurangabad.html/#sthash.42IjjEGm.dpuf

After Aurangabad poll showing, AIMIM’s got BMC in its sights…!!!

After staging a stupendous performance in the Aurangabad municipal polls where it won 25 out of 113 seats on Thursday, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has its sights set on the Mumbai civic elections scheduled to be held in February 2017.
The party wants to win at least 50 out of 227 seats in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, and put behind its discouraging show in the Bandra (East) Assembly by-polls early this month. AIMIM’s fiery approach is expected to make the BJP and Sena review their respective strategies for the BMC polls.
The saffron parties fought as an alliance in Aurangabad to tame the AIMIM challenge and won 58 seats (Sena 35, BJP 23). The ruling partners, who contested last year’s Assembly polls against each other, may forge a pact for the BMC where they are now ruling partners.
The Sena contested 64 and the BJP contested 49 seats in Aurangabad. AIMIM’s entry in Mumbai was as dramatic last year. It upstaged mighty parties, and tamed the Modi wave to emerge victorious in the Byculla Assembly segment and finished third in Shiv Sena’s stronghold Bandra (East).
It also won an Assembly seat in Aurangabad in the same elections. Earlier, it had dented the Congress in Nanded’s municipal polls. But it lost its poll deposit to a fierce battle between the Sena’s Trupti Sawant and Congress veteran Narayan Rane early this month in Bandra (East).
Despite the defeat, the votes it won (8,000 less than the 2014 polls) proved that AIMIM could still be a spoiler for major parties, especially where the Muslim community is a deciding factor. “In Mumbai, the AIMIM will concentrate on areas where the Muslims and Dalits are in majority. We’re a party that works for these backward classes.
The Congress and other parties have failed miserably,” the party’s Byculla MLA Waris Pathan told mid-day on Thursday. Pathan said that the performance in Aurangabad was a sign of what would happen in Mumbai. “Now nobody can stop us.
We have shown the Congress, BJP and Sena our might. We are the single largest opposition in Aurangabad. In fact, we may say we are the single largest party there because we fought alone, unlike the alliance of the Sena-BJP,” he said, adding that his party AIMIM has put the Bandra (East) debacle behind it.
According to Pathan, the party has already started working on a strategy for the 2017 Mumbai polls. “We can easily win 50 seats, and if we do exceedingly well in planning, we will surpass all expectations.” He, however, dismissed accusations that his party ate into the Congress’ vote share and helped parties like the BJP and Sena win. “If the accusation is true, the Congress should have won hands down in Navi Mumbai where we did not contest.”