AIMIM MP from Maharashtra’s Aurangabad Imtiaz Jaleel has confessed that Shiv Sena Minister Abdul Sattar had played a lion’s share in his victorious candidature in the Lok Sabha Elections of 2019. Imtiaz Jaleel, a former MLA from Aurangabad, also currently retains his position as AIMIM Maharashtra state president besides his role as an MP.
Jaleel on Saturday, March 26, revealed how he sought internal political understandings with Abdul Sattar, Shiv Sena’s political strongman from Aurangabad, for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While speaking at an event held in Khandala, he threw light on his undeterred friendship with Sattar despite belonging to opposing political parties. Elaborating on this political partnership with Abdul Sattar, Jaleel said that the former had turned into a kingmaker in Aurangabad, adding that ever since Sattar became a minister, the city is witnessing ‘Acche Din‘.
In 2014, Muslims had already given up on the Congress-NCP alliance which was in power for 15 years. The breakup of Shiv Sena and the BJP on the verge of assembly elections resulted in the split of Hindu votes in the state. Asaduddin Owaisi saw this as a golden opportunity to spread his Islamist politics in politically divided Maharashtra. AIMIM which was earlier restricted to Hyderabad managed to bag 2 seats in the 2014 Maharashtra Assembly Elections, with Imtiaz Jaleel winning with a high margin from Aurangabad Central.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha Elections of 2019, Abdul Sattar, a noted Muslim face of the Congress in the Marathwada region ditched the party owing to internal fighting. He was accepted by Shiv Sena, a party that had secured its base in Aurangabad as a hardline Hindutva outfit with its candidates representing the city as MLAs and MPs for more than two decades. At that time, Shiv Sena often touted Aurangabad as ‘Sambhajinagar’ making an argument that the city should be named after Chattrapati Sambhaji instead of the Mughal tyrant.
As Shiv Sena’s Hindutva face faded, it was time for AIMIM’s Imtiaz Jaleel to rise as Owaisi’s footsoldier from Aurangabad in Delhi. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, He managed to defeat Shiv Sena’s Chandrakant Khaire, a leader responsible for making Aurangabad a Shiv Sena stronghold by successively winning the Lok Sabha elections from 1999 to 2019. What helped Imtiaz Jaleel win the election was Shiv Sena’s declining interest to uphold Hindutva politics which resulted in many of its party workers deflecting to the BJP. Upon Jaleel’s confession, it is amply clear that Abdul Sattar, his Muslim compatriot in the newly-joined Shiv Sena also helped him galvanize Muslim votes in the constituency.
While Imtiaz Jaleel enjoys his grandstanding as a tall leader from AIMIM in Maharashtra, not many know he started his innings working as a journalist. Jaleel was an NDTV reporter based in Aurangabad for twelve years, a stance that helped him grab eyeballs for his coverage of Muslim issues in the state. He ended up as a talked-about leader in Maharashtra politics by participating in many agitations – one in which he made feminist writer Taslima Nasrin return back from the Aurangabad airport while she was on her visit to the Ellora caves in the city in 2017.