Owaisi’s AIMIM wants to contest 80 seats in Maharashtra

Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, August 14 

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has said it wants to contest 80 seats in the elections to Maharashtra’s 288-member Assembly later this year. 

In a statement it issued on Wednesday, the party said that it was looking to improve its tally from the existing two Members of Legislative Assembly, and also increase the seat share in its Aurangabad Lok Sabha constituency.

The statement said that AIMIM has sent a list of constituencies it wants to contest the elections from to its ally Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, a political outfit that headed former Member of Parliament Prakash Ambedkar heads.

Leaders of both parties discussed the sharing of seats on Tuesday, the statement said. 

In the 2014 Assembly elections, the AIMIM fielded its candidates in 24 constituencies and won from Byculla and Aurangabad Central. It got about five lakh votes and drew the support of Muslim and Dalit communities.

Most of the seats that the party wants to contest from are in Marathwada and Vidarbha, which have a sizeable number of Muslim voters.

Aurangabad MP Imtiyaz Jaleel, AIMIM’s Maharashtra president, held discussions with the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi on seat-sharing on Tuesday.

“We discussed every constituency. Though we claimed 80 seats, we would not stick to it. We are ready to leave a few seats for them,” the party spokesperson said in the statement.

The party’s national president Asaduddin Owaisi meanwhile claimed he believed there was a threat to his life from followers of Bathinda Ram Godse because he was “anti-BJP”.