Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM had tried to make a foray into Karnataka but had been unsuccessful until the recent electoral victory in urban local body polls in north Karnataka. After winning four seats in two municipal corporations, AIMIM is now once again aiming to foray into the Bengaluru city council. Incidentally, in the last Bengaluru civic body polls, in 2015, the then Siddaramiah-led Congress government did not give Owaisi permission to organise meetings in the city, and eventually, his party could not contest.
“In the coming BBMP elections, which are due to be held, we will contest in at least 20 seats if not more,” Zia Nomani, an AIMIM party spokesperson based in Bengaluru, told TNM. He said the AIMIM will contest from areas in east Bengaluru and other areas dominated by Muslims and Dalits.
“We are already active in places like Shivajinagar, DJ Halli and Pulekshi Nagar, where we are able to work with the people and highlight the existing lacunas on the ground and how we plan to sort them. We have a strong women’s wing. We are actively working in slum areas and are working on ensuring that they get vaccinated. We are very hopeful about doing good in these areas whenever elections take place,” added Zia.
Other than its own young party cadre, Zia claimed that many former corporators of the Congress and the JD(S) are also approaching them to join AIMIM, seeing an apparent tide in their favour.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections have not taken place since September 2020 when the five-year term of the previous council ended. Currently, the BBMP polls are delayed as the state government is carrying out the delimitation exercise to increase the number of wards from the previous 198 to 243.
The AIMIM, led by Hyderabad MP Assaduddin Owaisi, has won three seats in the Hubli-Dharwad and one seat in the Belagavi urban local body elections, marking their first electoral victory in Karnataka. In another three seats, they came a close second. Other than these two, Kalaburagi city had also gone to the polls in the first week of September, where the AIMIM drew a blank despite contesting in 21 seats.
Significantly, the four seats also meant that they had won only one seat less than the JD(S), the significant third party in the state in the three municipalities combined. The AIMIM had contested in the previous local urban body polls in north Karnataka albeit unsuccessfully.
Until recently, the party, which was limited to Telangana, has experienced electoral success in pockets of states like Maharashtra and Bihar in the recent past. And seeing the good results in Hubli-Dharwad polls, they are hopeful of having their MLA soon from the Hubballi-Dharwad East.
Zia claimed that while their prime electorate — the minorities and the Dalits — was already introduced with Owaisi's ideas and his speeches in the Parliament, they did not have any ground presence to emerge as a political option that the people could rely on. “Work on these areas had begun two years back, keeping an eye on the elections. People were already frustrated with the existing parties and they were just waiting for us to be available as a viable alternative,” Zia said.
He said the party will continue to contest elections under the broad idea of Dalit-Muslim unity, which they feel has been neglected over the years by the major parties to date. “Our recent successes in Maharashtra and Bihar have shown us that there are people who are ready for an alternative, which is us (AIMIM), as the so-called secular parties had taken these two sects as mere vote banks,” he said.