AIMIM leader Imtiaz Jaleel, who had called for the public hanging of former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma over the Prophet Muhammad row in 2022, lost the assembly polls on Aurangabad East seat.
BJP’s Atul Save trumped Jaleel with a wafer-thin margin in the Aurangabad East constituency, long regarded as the bastion of the AIMIM leader. Save bagged 93,274 votes, racking up 2,161 higher than AIMIM’s Jaleel.
The results come in the wake of a stunning Mahayuti alliance victory in Maharashtra, returning to power with a thumping majority by winning 231 seats in a 288-seat assembly and shaking off the disappointment it faced six months back in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha elections.
It is worth noting that days after Alt News cofounder Mohammed Zubair shared an incomplete video and dog-whistled against Nupur Sharma for defending her faith during a news debate on Times Now, scores of Islamists hit the streets chanting beheading slogans “Sar Tan Se Juda” against the beleaguered leader and calling for her public hanging. AIMIM leader Imtiaz Jaleel too rallied one such crowd in Aurangabad when he was found assuring them that Sharma would be brought and hanged on the road, a video of which instantly went viral on social media.
