The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is likely to field a fresh face for the Yakutpura Assembly seat in the upcoming Telangana election that is scheduled to be held on November 30. Sitting MLA Pasha Quadri, who won the seat in 2018, is reportedly unwell. One of the names that has come up as a probable replacement is that of former Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Mayor Majid Hussain.
Hussain, who is also a GHMC corporator member from the Mehdipatnam ward, became Mayor at the age of 31 in 2012, when Telangana was still part of the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh. He is believed to have been the youngest person to hold that position. A senior AIMIM leader said that while no names have been finalised by the party leadership, Hussain is one of the probable candidates.
The AIMIM, led by its national president and Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi, has been regularly winning seven assembly seats from the GHMC area, six of them falling in the old city . Chandrayangutta, Bahadurpura, Yakutpura, Karwan, Malakpet, and Charminar fall in the Old area or around it. Nampally is the only one which is technically outside of the old city. All seven are currently held by the AIMIM.
And Nampally is the one where the AIMIM is likely to face some competition from Congress candidate Feroz Khan, who lost the seat to AIMIM’s Jaffer Hussan by over 15,000 votes in the last elections. Actually Khan has lost the seat to Hussain thrice now since 2009, while the AIMIM has been winning all the 7 seats it currently holds since 2009.
“As of now no decision on our candidates has been taken, but names will be finalized soon. Even sitting MLAs have not been told whether they will be re-contesting. Pasha Quadri has not been well for some time,” the AIMIM leader, mentioned earlier, told TNM.
In the 2018 Telangana polls, AIMIM chief Owaisi put up 8 candidates in Hyderabad alone, while supporting the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) elsewhere. . The only seat the AIMIM then lost was Rajendernagar.
This time around as well, the party is likely to restrict itself to 7 or 8 seats. Owaisi, who held public meetings in different districts of Telangana, asked his supporters to vote for BRS supremo K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR).
After the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the polling schedule on Monday, October 9, Owaisi reiterated he was confident that KCR would win again.
Owaisi’s support for KCR paid-off handsomely for the BRS, which won 88 out of 199 seats in the 2018 state polls.
The Congress, which formed an alliance with the Telugu Desam party, managed to win only 19 while TDP a pitiful two. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which went solo, won just 1 seat.
Post the elections, 12 Congress MLAs and both the TDP MLAs defected to the BRS, rendering the Assembly devoid of any opposition.
Assembly elections in Telangana will be held on November 30, and the results declared on November 3.