Opinion | How Media Played Mani Shankar Aiyar in Maharashtra Elections – News18

Last Updated:December 01, 2024, 18:45 IST

In the assembly election of India’s richest state, whereas Muslim candidates and voters demonstrated that UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s ‘batenge to katenge’ slogan has merit, Hindu voters must have reacted to the journalistic fraternity’s shamelessly selective damning of Hindutva too

While the fraternity of journalists in the leftist-masquerading-as-neutral media slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for raising slogans like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s ‘batenge to katenge’ and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘ek hain to safe hain’, they were Muslim candidates and voters from the community in the recent Maharashtra assembly election who demonstrated the point.

In these rare polls, Muslims did not vote en bloc, en masse for one anti-BJP party — many Muslim women, the Election Commission’s data indicate, voted for the ‘saffron party’ — while, in a way, Hindus voted in the manner generally Muslims do!

Statistics showing PM Modi, CM Yogi are right

In certain constituencies, the presence of several Muslim candidates resulted in a division of the community’s votes. For instance, in Aurangabad East, where the Muslim electorate exceeds 37 per cent of the voter population, All India Majlis e Ittehad ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) state president and former MP Imtiaz Jaleel was defeated by the BJP’s Atul Save who won by a margin of 2,161 votes. Save received 93,274 votes while Jaleel garnered 91,113. Afsar Khan of VBA, who secured 6,507 votes, and Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Abdul Ghaffar Syed, who received 5,943 votes, further fragmented the Muslim votes, leading to Jaleel’s loss.

In Aurangabad Central, which has over 38 per cent Muslim voters, the AIMIM’s Siddiqui Naseruddin Taquiuddin ranked second with 77,340 votes. Pradeep Jaiswal of Shinde Sena, who led by 8,119 votes, won the seat while Balasaheb Thorat from the Shiv Sena (UBT) came in third with 37,098 votes.

Similarly, in Bhiwandi West, the BJP’s Mahesh Choughule triumphed over the SP’s Riyaz Azmi by 31,293 votes, with the Muslim electorate also divided among AIMIM’s Waris Pathan, who received 15,800 votes, and independent candidate Vilas Patil, who garnered 31,579 votes.

Interestingly, the AIMIM achieved a modest outcome in Maharashtra, winning only one of the 16 seats it contested. However, the party played a crucial role in downgrading the MVA performance in at least six assembly constituencies during the recent elections. The Hyderabad-based party nominated 12 Muslim and four Dalit candidates, primarily targeting regions with substantial populations of Muslims and the sections of Hindus and Buddhists whose prime concern appears to be their respective caste identities.

The AIMIM’s only victory came from Malegaon Central where Mufti Mohammad Ismail triumphed by a slim margin of just 162 votes. This constituency, with a Muslim voter demographic of 78 per cent, saw Ismail narrowly defeat Asif Shaikh Rasheed from the curiously named Indian Secular Largest Assembly of Maharashtra. The Samajwadi Party’s Nihal Ahmed finished third with 9,624 votes while the BJP did not contest this seat.

Likewise, in Dhule City, where Muslims constitute 22 per cent of the electorate, the AIMIM’s Shah Farook Anwar secured second place with 70,788 votes. The BJP’s Omprakash Agrawal won decisively, leading by 45,750 votes, while Uddhav Sena’s Anil Gote finished third with 24,304 votes. The AIMIM’s presence in this constituency likely diverted a large number of votes, affecting the MVA’s overall performance.

In Solapur City Central, which has nearly 25 per cent Muslim voters, the AIMIM’s Farooq Shabdi garnered 61,428 votes, finishing in second place. The BJP’s Devendra Kothe won the seat by a substantial margin of 48,850 votes. The Indian National Congress (INC), once a formidable competitor, managed a mere 16,385 votes.

In Nanded South, where Muslims make up more than 23 per cent of the electorate, AIMIM’s Syed Momin Syed Mukhtar received 15,396 votes, while Farooque Ahmed from Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi contributed 33,841 votes to the opposition’s total. The seat was ultimately won by Anand Tidke of Shinde Sena, who triumphed over Congress’s Mohanrao Hambarde by a slim margin of 2,132 votes.

Among the areas that witnessed a marginal impact of the division of Muslim votes, in Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar, Abu Azmi, the Maharashtra unit chief of the SP, successfully defended his seat with a margin of 12,753 votes. Nevertheless, AIMIM’s Ateeque Ahmad Khan garnered 42,027 votes, which considerably narrowed Azmi’s victory margin.

In Karanja, where nearly 21% of voters are Muslim, the AIMIM’s Mohammad Yusuf Mohammad Shafi Punjani obtained 31,042 votes to rank third. The BJP’s Sai Prakash Dahake won against NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Patni Gyayak Rajendra by a margin of 35,073 votes.

Why selectively blame one party, one community?

So, what was objectionable in the two slogans? Maybe the fact that they weren’t expressed in English! When primary school-going children are taught “united we stand, divided we fall” as a part of their moral science lessons, no parent cries “polarisation”. However, in the case of the Maharashtra election, the ‘secular’ media found nothing wrong with the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) act of entertaining demands from National Ulema Council, Maharashtra, and All India Muslim Personal Law Board member Sajjad Nomani, which included quotas for Muslims in state contracts and favoured treatment in recruitment for police forces.

Worse, in the first week of November, Akbaruddin Owaisi made a veiled reference to his infamous “take away the police for 15 minutes” threat at a rally of the AIMIM, which must have scared the daylights out of many a Hindu voter. But it was only when the BJP responded with the two slogans mentioned above that the leftist commentators collectively cried foul.

Mercifully, someone in the INC accepted the folly in his post-result analysis. “Maulana Sajjad Nomani should have stuck to guiding the community on religious affairs. His call confused the community and helped the BJP polarise the Hindu votes. If the maulana is interested in politics, he should fight elections,” said Asif Farooqui, the general secretary of the INC’s Mumbai unit.

Added to the theory that Muslim mobilisation must have triggered Hindu counter-polarisation, the people of Maharashtra must have reacted to the brazenly biased media commentary, as every day they were being told during the campaign that, out of the two large communities, Hindus alone were “communal”. Viewed from this angle, can the media that fashionably calls itself “mainstream” not be branded as the BJP’s force multiplier? They behaved like opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mani Shankar Aiyar, so prone to making remarks that hurt the majority, whenever they open their mouths, they transfer votes in big chunks to the very party they are supposed to beat in the electoral contest!

The author is a senior journalist and writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.