Lucknow: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimin (AIMIM), one of the dominant political parties of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, has been working hard to expand its base to other parts of North Indian States, but not able to win a single seat in Uttar Pradesh. 

It's chief Asaduddin Owaisi who is known for his immense oration skills and perceived as one of the tall leaders of Muslims, had decided to test the luck of his party and his oration skills in the Uttar Pradesh elections.

Often described as ‘vote cutter of Muslims’ by the opponents, mainly the non-BJP parties, AIMIM is also been termed as the ‘B team of the BJP’ as the party is accused of taking the chunk of Muslim votes, which only helps BJP in the polls as the AIMIM divides Muslims votes.

However, Owaisi, who has not given much care to the allegations, has been making plans to expand the base in other parts of the country. With this agenda, he fielded 100 candidates in UP of the total 403 seats.

The candidates were fielded largely in the Muslim dominated areas as Owaisi is clearly aware of the fact that the chance of his party’s candidates winning from Hindu dominated areas are slim or rather negligible.

However what is surprising is that leave alone winning, none of the party candidates even were leading in all the 100 assembly segments.

Despite UP having around 20% Muslim population, the party failed to win a single seat in the polls. Interestingly, it was believed that the firing that took place on the convoy of Owaisi where he escaped unhurt on February 3 in UP, would help him gain sympathy votes in the polls, but even that factor made no impact on the voters. Owaisi had also refused to forge an alliance with SP in the election. Some reports also suggested that Akhilesh Yadav, the chief of the Samajwadi Party was not interested for any pre-poll alliance with AIMIM as he feared that his alliance with AIMIM may anger Hindu voters as AIMIM has gained an identity of being a strong pro-Muslim party.

It appears that the Muslim voters of the UP were clearly aware of the fact that AIMIM will not make much impact in UP politics even if it wins a few seats. Therefore, the Muslims threw their complete weight behind SP as they did not want their votes to get divided.

Though AIMIM won five seats in the Bihar assembly polls held in 2020, he could not win a single seat in the last assembly polls in UP. Now, it is dejavu for the party in this election too.