Bihar: Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) will contest on 11 Lok Sabha seats of Bihar’s 40 parliamentary constituencies in the upcoming general elections, state party chief Akhtarul Iman said in Kishanganj on Wednesday.
The seats from where the party will contest have a substantial voter base of Muslims.
Speaking to media persons, Iman said, “Our party will field candidates in Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Karakat, Buxar, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Ujiyarpur besides Seemanchal’s four seats – Purnea, Katihar, Araria and Kishanganj.”
The party has already declared Iman as its candidate from Kishanganj. “We’ll very soon announce the name of candidates for other seats,” he added.
Iman, meanwhile, denied the reports that his party only represents Muslims. “Our electoral politics has not been limited to Muslims only, hence our strategy must not be seen as Muslim-centric in Bihar,” he claimed.
“Our party has been raising basic issues such as backwardness, poverty, illiteracy and we’ll continue to raise them till they are done away with,” Iman said.
AIMIM had won five seats in the 2020 assembly elections after the party launched aggressive campaigns in the Seemanchal region, an RJD stronghold.
The electoral gains of AIMIM was the electoral loss of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), as the latter managed to win only one seat in Seemanchal, which comprises 24 assembly and four Parliamentary seats.
AIMIM had won two assembly seats in Purnea and Kishanganj districts and one in Araria. The party won Jokihat seat in Araria, a bastion of late Mohammed Taslimuddin, a close confidant of Lalu Prasad of RJD.
Recently, Owaisi, the AIMIM national president and Hyderabad MP, visited Seemanchal and addressed several public meetings when he announced Iman as the party’s Kishanganj candidate.
AIMIM in Bihar opened its electoral account in 2019 when party candidate Qamrul Hoda won Kishanganj assembly seat in a bye-election by defeating Congress and BJP candidates.
