As many as 24 Muslim candidates have won the Lok Sabha elections across the country. Two Ulama, a cricketer and a law graduate from England are among the first-timers. And, two independent candidates.
Four of them are from the parties with purely Muslim nomenclature i.e. Indian Union Muslim League and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.
Two women, Iqra Hasan Choudhari and Sajida Ahmed have also made their way into the lower house.
However, the community’s presence in the 18th Lok Sabha has reduced marginally from 26 last time but is marginally higher than the 2014 tally when 23 Muslim candidates were elected to the lower house of Parliament.
Seventy-eight Muslims were fielded by various parties in the Lok Sabha elections this year, a significant drop from the last polls when 115 Muslim candidates were in the fray.
An in-service Imam of New Delhi’s Parliament Street Masjid, Moulana MohibbullahNadvi’s entry into lower house is very significant. He won the Rampur seat by securing 4,81,503 votes on Samajwadi Party ticket.
Among the other Muslim candidates who won this time, Rakibul Hussain’s victory in Dhubri is important in terms of the winning margin. The Congress candidate secured 14.71 lakh votes and defeated his nearest rival Mohammad Badruddin Ajmal by one of the highest margins of about 10 lakh votes.
On the other hand, first-time contender Yusuf Pathan beat Congress leader in the Lok Sabha and six-time MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury by 85,022 votes in his Baharampur bastion in West Bengal.
Congress candidate from Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur, Imran Masood, won by a margin of 64,542 votes while Iqra Hasan Choudhary, a 29-year-old law graduate from England, Samajwadi Party candidate from Kairana, secured victory over BJP’s Pradeep Kumar by 69,116 votes.
Afzal Ansari, the incumbent MP from Ghazipur and the younger brother of muscleman Mukhtar Ansari, retained the seat by bagging 5.3 lakh votes, while Zia Ur Rehman won in Sambhal by a margin of 1.2 lakh votes.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi retained his Hyderabad seat by a margin of 3,38,087 votes over his nearest rival BJP’s Madhavi Latha Kompella,whohad been in the news for two negative reasons: aiming towards a Masjid in her rally with hand making a bow and arrow indications and asking the women voters at booth to remove their hijab.
In Jammu and Kashmir, National Conference’s Srinagar candidate Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, a prominent scholar, son of Aga Syed Mehdi, secured 3,56,866 votes and won by a margin of 1.88 lakh votes against his nearest rival PDP’s Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra.
Mian Altaf Ahmad of the National Conference won in Anantnag-Rajouri by 2,81,794 votes against former J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.
In Ladakh, Independent candidate Mohammad Haneefa secured a victory by a margin of 27,862 votes while another independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh won Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla seat by bagging 4.7 lakh votes.
In Bihar, Congress’ Tariq Anwar won the Katihar seat after a close contest with JD(U) candidate Dulal Chandra Goswami. Anwar won by a margin of 49,863 votes.
Party-Wise
Congress now has the highest number of seven Muslim MPs, Trinamool Congress (TMC) five, and SP four. The Indian Union Muslim League has three MPs, National Conference two and AIMIM one. Two are independents.
Declining Strength:
The 18th Lok Sabha in 2024 will see only 24 Muslim MPs, which was the second-lowest tally ever in the House of 543 members. Fourteen of them are in constituencies where the community is in a majority.
The 2014 General Election saw the lowest Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha at 22, while the community had its highest ever presence in the Lok Sabha, at 49, in 1980.
In terms of population based on religion, the Muslim community stands second in the country. Although Muslim voters are seen as a decisive factor in each election season, community representation, even in States where it forms a sizeable percentage of the population, remains low.
Political analysts attribute the diminishing number of Muslim legislators to the fact that most Opposition parties, since the BJP’s advent to power in 2014, have shied away from giving tickets to Muslim candidates, fearing a polarising contest, with their numbers dropping in each General Election.
The Congress, SP, and TMC, key members of the INDIA bloc have given fewer seats to Muslim candidates. In 2024, the Congress nominated Muslims in only 19 seats while it nominated 34 Muslims in 2019; the TMC fielded six Muslim candidates against 13 in 2019; and the Samajwadi Party had only four Muslim candidates, half the number it had in 2019.
“Due to the narrative created by the BJP, political parties are giving fewer and fewer tickets to Muslim candidates,” S.Q.R. Ilyas, president of the Welfare Party of India, who was a candidate from the Jangipur constituency in West Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, said.
In 2024, the INDIA bloc, which includes the Congress, TMC, SP, RJD, NCP, and CPI-M fielded 78 Muslim candidates, while they together had fielded 115 Muslims in 2019, while the BJP fielded one, and its ally, JD-U also one in Bihar.
Both TMC and SP are known to secure a sizeable number of Muslim votes.
Political analyst Rashid Kidwai feels that a truncated mandate for the BJP notwithstanding, Muslim candidates were unlikely to be nominated in higher numbers. “I don’t see this changing anytime soon,” he said. The BSP fielded 35 Muslim candidates in 2024, the highest among all parties, albeit almost half of the 61 it fielded in 2014. Opposition parties have, however, branded this an attempt to divide the community’s votes in constituencies where it matters in order to benefit the BJP, a narrative which is recurrent in many constituencies across the country that have a sizeable number of Muslim voters.
For instance, in West Bengal’sKrishnanagar constituency, won by TMC’s Mahua Moitra, party workers were concerned that S.M. Sadi, the joint Left-Congress candidate, could have cut into the community’s votes, which otherwise may have gone to Moitra. Similarly, Kunwar Danish Ali of INC contested from Amroha in UP but lost to BJP candidate just by 28670 votes whereas the BSP candidate Mujahid Husain got 164099 votes only to get third position.
Some stalwarts like Badruddin Ajmal, Mahbooba Mufti, and Omar Abdulla were knocked out. So alsowas the firebrand speaker Advocate Mahmood Paracha, who secured fifth place in Rampur of UP with just 2759 votes, trailing far behind the winner who got 478744 votes.
“The Muslim voter in 2024 has voted very carefully. Muslims have tacitly taken a step back and voted for safety and security,” Mr. Kidwai said. “They (Muslim voters) would surely want a seat at the high table, but for now they are insecure about safety and security issues and have made decisive choices while voting,” he added.