In the recently concluded assembly elections in five states, the Congress managed to form a government in only one state—Telangana. Securing 64 seats, the Congress has a clear majority and will soon assume power in the state. With this, it will replace the Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which had been in power since the formation of the newly carved state in 2014.
Notably, the BRS changed its name from TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samithi) in December 2022 reflecting the national ambitions of the then CM KCR. However, following the defeat in the state assembly election, Delhi now seems to be a far-off dream for BRS Supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao.
In the Telangana assembly elections, the Congress emerged as the largest party with 64 seats, surpassing the halfway mark of 60 seats. Consequently, Congress is confident about forming the government in the southern state. In contrast, the outgoing ruling party, BRS, which held power for the last 10 years, has been reduced to 39 seats. The BJP, on the other hand, has seen a notable improvement, increasing its tally from 1 MLA last time to 8 MLAs this time. AIMIM has retained its 7 seats out of the total 8 seats in the Hyderabad region. Goshamahal remains the only seat in the Hyderabad region beyond AIMIM’s influence and has been secured by BJP’s Raja Singh for the third consecutive time, achieving a hat-trick as Goshamahal’s MLA.
The BRS and AIMIM have been contesting elections in Telangana with an understanding. This benefitted BRS as its association with AIMIM has been fetching en mass votes from the Muslim community. This time Owaisi’s party had fielded candidates on 9 seats, while supporting BRS on all the remaining seats. However, this state assembly election saw a major shift.
Incidentally, while Muslim voters of Hyderabad rallied behind AIMIM, they preferred Congress over the BRS-AIMIM alliance in the rest of the state. Strikingly, Congress secured a vote share of 39.40% while BRS received 37.35% votes share emphasising the impact of this en-mass shift of the Muslim community as a voting bloc.
KCR had promised ‘Muslim IT Park’
Both BRS and Congress left no stone unturned to woo Muslim voters. KCR had even promised that a separate IT park would be built for Muslims. He vowed to voters that if BRS returned to power, it would build an IT park for Muslims in the Pahari Sharif area near Hyderabad. During the election campaign, he accused Congress of considering Muslims only as a vote bank and not doing any work for their development. He also gave a poll promise to increase the reservation for Muslims in education and employment to 12%.
Additionally, the BRS Chief announced that he would prepare ‘Shaadikhana’ for the Muslim community. The KCR-led BRS government also started 296 residential schools only for Muslims, forcing the government to spend Rs 12,000 crore separately on the Muslim community which forms 13% of the state’s population.
The BRS government came up with a scheme called ‘Shaadi Mubarak’ for Muslim girls. Under the scheme, Muslim girls were given financial assistance for marriage. He had also made a poll promise to develop the old Hyderabad on the lines of Turkey’s capital Istanbul.
Despite that, before the state assembly elections, Jamaat-e-Islami state president Hamid Mohammad Khan had stated that they had no reason to continue supporting BRS. He accused the party of supporting anti-Muslim bills in Parliament.
For those unversed, KCR’s party BRS was absent from voting during the passage of the Triple Talaq bill in Parliament. At the same time, former state president of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, Hafiz Peer Sabbir Ahmed had also accused BRS of breaking the promise to Muslims on the issue of 12% reservation for the community.
It has become clear that BRS will not be given entry into the I.N.D.I. alliance which will further weaken its chances in the Lok Sabha elections, as the fight for Muslim votes will only intensify from here on. The preference of the Muslim voters seems to be apparent that they want to strengthen the Congress party before the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections so that it can put up a fight against the BJP.
Muslims constitute 13% of the population in Telangana. Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ had also traversed through the Muslim-dominated areas in Telangana to woo them.
Congress made a special strategy to woo Muslim voters
Despite major poll promises from BRS and schemes benefitting the community, KCR-led BRS was not the first preference for Muslims while their alliance partner AIMIM managed to win 7 out of 9 seats.
It is pertinent to note that while KCR was engrossed in Muslim appeasement, Congress also made special efforts to woo Muslim voters. Notably, Karnataka Housing and Minority Welfare Minister Zameer Ahmed Khan was deployed to court Muslim voters in Telangana. He stayed in Telangana for 28 days and held one meeting after the other with Muslim community leaders, thinkers, and Muslim leaders of the party.
He also held several rallies in Muslim-dominated areas. In 49 seats, he made a lot of efforts to polarise the Muslims in favor of the Congress party. He discussed strategies with Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal and was also in constant touch with the party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Under this strategy, many leaders from BRS and AIMIM were also roped into the Congress party. Apart from Karnataka Minister Ahmed Khan, many other Muslim leaders from Karnataka were also deployed in Telangana to boost Congress’ prospects among the Muslim community.
These are the reasons why Congress secured the majority of Muslim votes in almost every district of Telangana, except Greater Hyderabad. Owaisi did not field any candidate from Goshamahal in Hyderabad, from where firebrand Hindu leader Raja Singh has been winning. Whereas in the Jubilee Hills area, AIMIM fielded their candidate against Congress’ contender Azharuddin, even though their alliance partner BRS had also given a candidate in this constituency. As a result, Congress suffered a defeat in this constituency. However, Congress had publicised it in such a way that Muslim votes were being deliberately divided.
This backdrop indicates that Asaduddin Owaisi somehow saved his stronghold of Hyderabad but could not transfer Muslim votes to his alliance partner KCR in the rest of Telangana.
According to Karnataka Minister Zameer Ahmed Khan, apart from the guarantee schemes of Congress, the process of making election strategy in collaboration with ‘Muslim think tank’ for 49 seats was successful. He also attributed the victory to meetings with Muslim community leaders.
The founder of ‘Jan Ki Baat’, Pradeep Bhandari also believes that the voters from the Muslim community went towards Congress to strengthen it. Notably, he had made an accurate assessment of Telangana in the assembly elections. The assessment of ‘Jan Ki Baat’ said that Congress may get 48-64 seats in the state while BRS will get between 40-55 seats, and BJP’s seats would be around 13. His assessment was accurate and BRS got only 1 seat less than his assessment.
‘Whoever is strong against Modi, Muslim votes will be mobilised against him’: Pradeep Bhandari
OpIndia spoke to Pradeep Bhandari about the voting behaviour of the Muslim community in Telangana. He said that the main objective of Muslim votes is to stop BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and for that their first priority is always the Congress party. He asserted that whenever Muslim voters see that Congress can become stronger, they shift in that direction. He pointed out that after the formation of the Congress government in Karnataka, the party tried to create an environment that Narendra Modi could be defeated in 2024.
Pradeep Bhandari believes that due to this reason, Muslim voters felt that ‘their Congress’ was fighting the elections very well, so in such a situation most of the Muslim voters shifted from BRS to Congress.
Referring to Rajasthan, he said that when Kanhaiya Lal Teli was murdered by Islamic fundamentalists raising ‘Sar Tan Se Juda’ slogans, there was a delay in the compensation given to the family, whereas in Jaipur, when a Muslim youth died in an interpersonal dispute, the Collector paid Rs. 50 lakhs overnight. Therefore, Muslims know that their first priority is Congress and that is why they want to do ‘ghar wapsi’.
For those unversed, when these incidents unfolded in Rajasthan, there was a Congress party government under the leadership of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. Referring to the demographic data, Jan ki Baat founder Bhandari said that where Muslim voters are more, i.e. around 30%, BJP has won in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.
He noted that earlier Congress used to think that in the seats where there are more Muslims, it would win the elections by only talking about them, but now this is not happening. Now people are uniting against appeasement.
During this, Pradeep Bhandari also mentioned the remarks made by Tamil Nadu Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, in which he had likened Sanatan Dharma with dengue-malaria and called for eradicating it.
Bhandari explained that the Congress party deliberately did not condemn this statement because of which it had to suffer the consequences. He told OpIndia that BJP won 35 seats in Madhya Pradesh where the Muslim community is dominant. Similarly, the majority of the 12 such seats in Chhattisgarh also went to BJP’s account.
Pradeep Bhandari added that the Muslim vote will not only rally behind Congress but if it sees that Mamata Banerjee’s TMC is strong in West Bengal, then it will rally behind it. Whereas Congress is strong in Telangana, this vote was gathered behind it. Pradeep Bhandari added that one more thing worth noting in this is that after the results of Hindi Heartland, there has been frustration among the Muslim voters that even after trying their best, they are not able to stop Narendra Modi.
Pradeep Bhandari further said, “Muslim voters will rally behind every party which according to them can defeat Narendra Modi in 2024. Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal or Congress Party in South India, but they will rally behind DMK in Tamil Nadu. They will not go after Congress in Bengal and Bihar.” That is, they clearly believe that Congress will be the first choice of Muslims, but where regional powers are fighting strongly against the BJP, these voters will go with them.
