Like Guj, AAP and AIMIM will be factors in 2023 MP elections too
bhopal: After Gujarat, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM are set to turn their attention to next year's Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, where they are likely to be key factors given their good show in local body elections held in July-August.
Though the Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit put up a below-par performance, winning just five Assembly seats in Gujarat, and the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) drew a blank, the two parties dented the electoral prospects of the Congress in several seats, especially where minorities have a significant presence.
The AAP failed to replace the Congress as the principal Opposition party in Gujarat despite its pre-poll hype and high-decibel campaign, but it managed to secure a healthy 13 per cent vote share in the western state, clearing the way for it to become a national party.
However, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Opposition Congress in Madhya Pradesh, where Assembly polls are due by 2023-end, are not attaching much importance to the presence of the AAP and the AIMIM citing the largely bipolar politics of the state.
The AAP is clearly looking to emerge as a credible alternative in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP and the Congress have been dominant political forces and have ruled the state, which has a 230-member Assembly, between themselves.
"We will certainly present a third option before the people of Madhya Pradesh in the 2023 elections and contest all the 230 Assembly seats in the state," AAP Madhya Pradesh president Pankaj Singh said.
There is definitely space for the third political option in Madhya Pradesh as the people of the state are fed up with both BJP and Congress, he claimed.
The Hyderabad-headquartered AIMIM would like to build on its performance in local body polls in Madhya Pradesh held just a few months ago. AIMIM leader Sayyad Minhajuddin, a corporator in Hyderabad and in-charge of the party in Madhya Pradesh said, "Based on our performance in local body elections, we would definitely like to contest the Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, but a final decision will be taken by our party leadership." The Congress, however, sought to downplay the AAP and AIMIM factor in the Assembly polls, saying they do not have a presence on the ground in the state. "The Aam Aadmi Party and Owaisi's party are not at all a challenge before us in MP," state Congress president and former chief minister Kamal Nath said.
"Both these parties project themselves as a major force but they don't have any base at the ground level (in MP)," he said.
The former CM, whose government collapsed in March 2020 following a revolt by a section of Congress MLAs, dismissed the AAP and the AIMIM as the "B-team of the BJP." "Owaisi's party and the AAP are definitely the B-team of the BJP and this is a well-known fact now. They contest polls only at those places where they can cause damage to the Congress," Nath alleged.
The BJP, which lost the 2018 Assembly polls but managed to come back to power in 2020 following the collapse of the Congress government, also made light of the AAP's presence in central state.
