Congress aims to gain ground in Muslim-majority seats in Delhi Assembly elections, citing, what it describes as AAP’s declining credibility.
New Delhi: The Congress party has kicked off its internal assessments for the upcoming Assembly elections in Delhi, which will allow the Delhi unit to mark out probable candidates. The party has also deployed its leaders on the grassroots to tap the pulse of the people and understand their demands so that the manifesto formation would reflect people’s needs. The Delhi Assembly has 70 odd seats.
Moreover, a party insider said, the party will focus only on 25 Assembly seats in the rural areas including the seven seats of Muslim dominated areas.
A Congress spokesperson in Delhi said, “The party is gearing up and trying to adjust its organisational system in order to solidly establish the booth committees in Delhi. We are sure that this time we will make entry into the Assembly as we believe that the AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has lost the kind of credibility he had in the last two Assembly elections, and Muslims also have understood that AAP is not with them. They didn’t stand against Citizenship Amendment Act and also did not help them during riots and therefore, we will win Muslim dominated seats.”
Congress is striving to make its mark in the Delhi Assembly, having failed to win a single seat in the past decade due to the overwhelming AAP wave that dominated the elections.
According to a party insider, “We have more expectations from Muslim areas as we believe that they will vote for us than they will vote for the AAP. We are sure that we will at least win seats from Muslim areas.”
The seven Muslim majority Assembly seats in Delhi are Chandni Chowk, Matia Mahal, Babarpur, Seelampur, Okhla, Ballimaran and Mustafabad. Among these, the Mustafabad Assembly segment and Babarpur Assembly, which has around 35% population, have been held by BJP in the past due to the split in Muslim votes between AAP and Congress
In addition to that, the Okhla constituency has never been won by a non-Muslim since 1993. The Okhla Constituency has about 65% Muslim votes as per a report. Seelampur is another constituency that has never been won by a non-Muslim. The Congress party had won this seat four times in the past and the Aam Aadmi Party won it in 2015 and retained the seat in 2019.
Matia Mahal Assembly segment too has never been won by a non-Muslim and is another of the Muslim dominated constituency of Delhi. Shoaib Iqbal of Congress had held the seat from 1993 to 2015 before conceding it to Asif Ahmed Khan of the Aam Aadmi Party. The Muslims constitute around 40% of the electorate in the Assembly segment. Another constituency, Chandni Chowk, which has a Muslim population of over 40%, was won by Alka Lamba for the Aam Aadmi Party in 2015, she is now with the Congress.No non-Muslim has ever won Ballimaran Assembly constituency. Haroon Yusuf from the Congress party held the seat from 1993 to 2015 while the Aam Aadmi Party’s Imran Hussain succeeded in snatching the constituency away from the Congress.
The Dalit-Muslim combination could prove to be decisive in Ballimaran.