The author is a Patna based senior journalist.

T here is a general perception that Muslims en bloc voted for the Secular Front in Bihar. But a close examination of the results would reveal that had they voted as a bloc the Bharatiya Janata Party would not have won more than one seat in the state. This time it won five against 12 in 1999. Its partner the Janata Dal (United) performed slightly better as it won six seats against 18 in the 1999 election. But then the BJP contested 16 while Janata Dal (United) 24 seats.

No doubt a majority of Muslims voted for the Secular Front, which comprised Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress, Lok Janshakti, CPM and Nationalist Congress Party. But in at least four of the 40 parliamentary constituencies Muslims paved the way for the victory of the BJP candidates. In a couple of other places too Muslims voted for the non-Secular Front candidates but could not ensure the victory of the NDA nominees because the popular mood of the voters or the caste combination was against them.

The problem once again is the Muslim dominated constituencies of eastern part of the state. If in 1999 Shahnawaz Hussain (who later became the Union minister) won from the Kishanganj seat, which has 66 per cent Muslims, it was just because of the presence of two more strong Muslim candidates. This time too apart from Taslimuddin, the RJD candidate who finally won by a big margin of 160497, there was another Muslim, Abdul Jalil Mastan, of the Samajwadi Party, in the fray. Mastan managed to get 77,356 votes and could not harm Taslimuddin as much as Maulana Israr-ul-Haque, an independent did in 1999.

But the split in Muslim votes in Bhagalpur, Katihar, Purnea and Araria proved very costly to the RJD alliance. In the first three the Muslim votes got badly divided because of the presence of the Muslim candidates of a third party while in Araria reserved seat a large number of Muslims voted for the Samajwadi Party nominee, Ramji Das Rishideo, who ended up second.

Take the case of Bhagalpur where Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, who was till recently the leader of opposition in the Bihar assembly, won by 117,853. Modi defeated the sitting CPM MP, Subodh Roy, who had the support of Congress, RJD and others. But here too Muslim votes for the Bahujan Samaj Party nominee, Parwez Khan alias Pappu Khan, paved the way for Modi’s victory. Khan, managed to get 130,064 votes. Incidentally, almost all the votes he got was of the Muslims.

Similarly, the Nationalist Congress Party general secretary, Mr Tariq Anwar, lost by a slender margin of just 2,565 votes. Here too Mubarak Hussain of the Samajwadi Party played spoilsport as he cornered 37,584 votes.

In Purnea too it was the presence of the Muslim candidate, Dr Irshad Khan of Samajwadi Party, which led to the defeat of Pappu Yadav of Lok Janshakti Party by a small margin of 12,883 votes. This seat was finally won by Uday Singh of the BJP. Dr Khan got 47,301 votes.

In Munger parliamentary constituency a large number of Muslims, especially in the urban areas, voted for the Janata Dal (United) candidate, Mr Monazir Hassan. The latter was the minister in the Rabri Devi cabinet till a few days before the election, but switched over to the Janata Dal (United). He was the lone candidate of the party in the state where it contested 24 seats. Two of the 16 BJP candidates were Muslims and both lost.

Some Muslims were so aggressive in support for Monazir that on the election day one person of the community even lost his life while two others received injuries. In spite of this Monazir lost by a huge margin of 127,303.

Though Muslims are not entirely to be blamed for the defeat of RJD candidate, Bhagwan Lal Sahni, from Muzaffarpur it is also a fact that had they voted more aggressively, especially in the urban areas, there would not have been any possibility of the NDA convenor, George Fernandes, winning the seat by 9,693 votes. Some Muslims still had the reservation about Sahni who was earlier associated with the Sangh Parivar.

It is only in the case with the Buxar seat that it can be said that the BJP’s Lal Muni Choubey, won not because of the division in the Muslim votes. In fact here an Independent, Daddan Yadav, ended up second pushing the RJD’s national spokesman, Shivanand Tiwary, into the third place. Here the Yadav factor was responsible for the defeat of the RJD leader.

The problem with a sizeable section of Muslim voters is that they did not throw their lot behind honest or upright candidates of the community, but shady personalities like Dr Irshad Khan, whose name even figured in the CBSE question leak racket in 2003 and Pappu Khan, the notorious character of Bhagalpur. Pappu Khan, Mubarak Hussain, Jalil Mastan and Irshad Khan were never in contest yet a large number of Muslims chose to support them. Incidentally the two RJD leaders, who joined the NDA recently––Monazir was Janata Dal (United) candidate and Anwarul Haque the BJP nominee from Seohar––lost the election.

Comment...

Comments:-