AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi has taken on Tejashwi Yadav-led Mahagathbandhan in Bihar.
Owaisi hit back at the RJD-Congress alliance after they accused the Hyderabad-based leader of playing the role of BJP's B-team.
According to the opposition alliance, the AIMIM was participating in Bihar elections merely to split the Muslim voter base.
AIMIM BJP's B-team?
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Owaisi was called the BJP's B-team.
During the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, the BJP won many seats with small margins, sweeping the party into power.
In one of the Constituencies Bijnor, the SP-RLD alliance got 95,720 votes, while the BJP got 97,165 votes. That's a margin of less than 1,500 votes. The game-changer, many political experts argue, was the 2,290 votes won by the AIMIM.
A similar kind of alleged vote-cutting was observed in Muslim-dominated Nakur, Sultanpur, Shahganj and Firozabad. And ultimately, BJP candidates won from these constituencies.
AIMIM entered Bihar politics in 2015. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party got one seat, while in 2020 Assembly polls, it won five seats.
With few strongholds in Bihar, Owaisi's party, the opposition claims, is ensuring that non-BJP votes do not consolidate in one place.
But, Owaisi has defended his party's decision to contest Bihar polls. He told Deccan Herald that multiple delegations from Bihar had visited Hyderabad, and it was then that he decided to establish his party in the state.
Owaisi kicks off poll campaign
Owaisi, on Tuesday, kicked off the election campaign of his party for the Bihar assembly elections. He questioned why the eastern state cannot have a Muslim CM despite the minority community comprising 17 per cent of the state's population.
Owaisi, whose party is contesting 32 assembly seats in the poll-bound state, launched his election campaign from Gopalganj, where he addressed a rally at a village 20 km away from the district headquarters.
So will this time be different? Will AIMIM win enough seats to have a say in Bihar politics? OR will Mahagathbandhan's allegations prove true and Owaisi just end up cutting the anti-BJP vote?
