Polarisation? Again, why only 10 Muslim MLAs in new Maharashtra assembly

Maharashtra’s Muslims—12 per cent of the state’s 125 million people but for long politically underrepresented—have 10 MLAs from the community in the new 288-member legislative assembly, the same as in 2019. This presence, while still marginal, is a relief of sorts given the apprehensions of a further decline in their numbers after this election.
The highest number of Muslim MLAs belong to the Congress (three), followed by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar (two each). The Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde, its rival faction Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) have one Muslim MLA each.
The Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Haroon Khan, who wrested the Versova seat in Mumbai from Bharati Lavekar of the BJP, has become the third Muslim to be elected as a MLA of the Shiv Sena since its birth in 1966. Minister Abdul Sattar, who is the second, has retained his Sillod seat in Aurangabad (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) as a candidate of Shinde’s Sena.
Previously, the late Shabir Bhai Shaikh, who is credited with having built the Shiv Sena in Thane district and nearby areas with the late ‘Dharmaveer’ Anand Dighe, was elected as a Shiv Sena MLA from Ambernath and was a minister in the Sena-BJP government from 1995 to 1999.
The three Muslims elected on Congress tickets this time are Amin Patel (Mumbadevi), Sajid Khan Pathan (Akola West) and Aslam Shaikh (Malad West). The SP’s Abu Asim Azmi (Mankhurd Shivajinagar) and Rais Shaikh (Bhiwandi East) have retained their seats as has the AIMIM’s Mufti Mohammad Ismail Khalique (Malegaon Central).
The NCP’s Sana Malik Shaikh won her father Nawab Malik’s Anushaktinagar seat in Mumbai against Fahad Ahmed of the NCP (SCP), while her party colleague Hasan Mushrif beat back a challenge from the NCP (SCP) nominee and local royal Raje Samarjeetsingh Ghadge from Kagal. Nawab Malik, however, lost to Azmi from Mankhurd Shivajinagar.
The margins of victory vary from over 52,000 for Rais Shaikh to just 163 votes for Mufti in Malegaon Central. Muslim candidates such as former minister Muhammed Arif (Naseem) Khan (Congress), Zeeshan Siddiqui and Najib Mulla (NCP) and former AIMIM MP Syed Imtiaz Jaleel have lost from their seats.
Incidentally, the 78-member state legislative council has just one Muslim MLC—Idris Naikwadi of the NCP.
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) had nominated eight Muslim candidates in the assembly elections. The highest number of Muslims (12) were fielded by the AIMIM. The support for 269 candidates of the MVA by controversial Muslim cleric Maulana Sajjad Nomani is said to have contributed to a counter-mobilisation of Hindus in favour of the Mahayuti.
“Despite this being a highly-polarised election, the Muslim community has managed to get representation across party lines,” said Rais Shaikh. He credited his victory to his “social engineering” model in which he also reached out to the Hindus. “We must be seen as inclusive leaders and must demolish the misconceptions created around Muslims,” he urged. Bhiwandi West has a 373,000-strong electorate, of which around 55 per cent are Muslims.
Over the years, the number of Muslims elected to the legislative assembly has seen a gradual decline or stagnation. In 1999, 12 Muslim legislators were elected, but in 2004 the number fell to 11. The 2009 elections to the Maharashtra assembly saw just 10 Muslim MLAs being elected, including five from the Congress. Of these MLAs, six were from Mumbai, which along with Thane accounts for an estimated one-third of Maharashtra’s Muslim population. In 2014, the number of Muslim MLAs fell further to nine, but marginally rose to 10 in 2019.
The trends come amidst Muslims being seen as slipping on development indices. In 2014, a state government-appointed committee, under former IAS officer Mehmood-ur-Rehman, noted that 59.8 per cent of Muslims in rural Maharashtra and 59.4 per cent in the urban areas were below the poverty line, with just 2.2 per cent graduates. The community, which is the largest minority in the state, has just 4.2 per cent representation in the police while accounting for 28.3 per cent of the undertrials (in 2007).
Muslim leaders and activists blame declining numbers in the legislative assembly on changing social realities and growing religious polarisation, where transfer of votes to minority candidates from other religious denominations has generally become tough.
In the Lok Sabha elections, Muslims had solidly backed the MVA, giving it a swashbuckling victory in 31 of the 48 seats. This led to BJP leaders making allegations about ‘vote jihad’, a pejorative term implying the near-total transfer of minority votes to a particular political combine. This, coupled with the ‘Ek hain toh safe hain’ and ‘Batenge toh katenge’ slogans, is said to have led to a Hindu consolidation for the Mahayuti.
However, Marathi Muslims—those originally from Maharashtra and can speak Marathi—complain that the political space for Muslims is often dominated by emigrees from Hindi-speaking states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The last Marathi Muslim leader with a pan-Maharashtra and pan-community presence was the late Barrister Abdul Rehman Antulay, who hailed from Raigad, and is the only Muslim chief minister of Maharashtra so far.
In 1984, Antulay, who had been denied a nomination by the Congress for the Lok Sabha elections, formed his own breakaway faction of the Congress and contested the polls from Kulaba (Raigad). Antulay lost to Advocate Datta Patil of the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) by a narrow margin, pushing A.T. Patil of the Congress to third position in an election which had seen the BJP being relegated to just two seats in the sympathy wave for the Congress after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
In 2004, Antulay was the only Muslim elected to the Lok Sabha from Maharashtra. After a hiatus, Syed Imtiaz Jaleel of the AIMIM was elected from Aurangabad in 2019. At present, Maharashtra has no Muslim MP in the Lok Sabha.
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