New Delhi: The Congress is learnt to be considering the option of fielding Ishrat Jahan—a former municipal councillor of the party, who spent two years in jail in connection with a Delhi riots case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA)—as its candidate from the Muslim-dominated Okhla constituency in the upcoming Delhi assembly polls.
Another Delhi riots case accused, Tahir Hussain, who remains in jail, has already been fielded as a candidate by the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the Mustafabad constituency, which is also among the seven seats where Muslims are in the majority.
According to the 2011 population census, Muslims account for 12.86 percent of the city’s population. The other Muslim-majority seats in the city are Seelampur, Babarpur, Chandni Chowk, Ballimaran and Matia Mahal.
ThePrint has learnt that Jahan conveyed her willingness to contest to the Congress leadership, when it reached out to her about her possible candidature from Okhla, which has been held by Aam Aadmi Party’s Amanatullah Khan since 2015. The Congress’s Asif Muhammad Khan and Parvez Hashmi have held it in the past.
This article is FREE to read
We need your support to sustain good journalism and empower us to deliver unhyphenated, hard-hitting news, insightful opinions, and ground reports.
Jahan is the daughter-in-law of Hashmi, who has also been a Rajya Sabha MP of the Congress. Asif Muhammad Khan’s daughter Ariba Khan, who won as a councillor in the 2022 Delhi civic polls, is also among the strong contenders for a ticket from the seat. The Congress has so far named 47 candidates for the polls to the 70-member Delhi assembly.
A Delhi court had granted bail to Jahan in March 2022, observing that “she was neither physically present in North-East Delhi for riots nor was she was part of any group, organisation or WhatsApp groups or her name cropped up in flurry of calls or in any CCTV footage or in any of the conspiratorial meetings”.
Hussain, also a former municipal councillor, was suspended from the AAP after his arrest. In May, he obtained bail in one of the riot cases, with a Delhi court saying that his role in it was “remote in nature” and that he has already spent over three years in custody.
However, he continues to remain behind bars as he is an accused in other rioting cases, including the alleged larger conspiracy behind the communal conflagration and a money laundering case related to funding it.
Also Read: Kejriwal promises Rs 18,000 stipend for pujaris & granthis, warns: ‘obstructing it would be sin’
Muslim voters disenchanted with AAP?
Behind the strategy of the Congress and the AIMIM, placing bets on candidates embroiled in riots cases, is the impression that a large section of Muslims are disenchanted with the AAP for tiptoeing around issues of minority rights, including its muted stance during the February 2020 communal riots in Delhi that led to the killings of 53 people—38 Muslims and 15 Hindus—and the Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The AAP’s diffidence on raising these issues has come hand in hand with the party’s pivot towards politics steeped in religious symbolism. From Kejriwal chanting the Hanuman Chalisa to the AAP taking out Bajrangbali shobha yatras and holding a state-funded televised Lakshmi Puja, the party has been making efforts to avoid being labelled as pro-minority.
On Monday, Kejriwal took another step on this front, announcing that Hindu priests and Sikh granthis would be paid a monthly allowance of Rs 18,000, if his party returned to power in the city-state.
In an interview to ThePrint earlier this month, AAP leader Jasmine Shah, who has authored the book The Delhi Model, had dismissed the party’s emphasis on piety, saying it does not believe in the idea that religion should not be talked about in the political sphere.
“We are intrinsically a religious country, and our leaders are believers. Arvind Kejriwal has always been a Hanuman bhakt. To say we will not talk about religion at all is something we are not comfortable with. I am a Jain. Somebody is a proud Hindu and indulges in their religious practices, so be it. But you may have never seen AAP using religion as a divisive force. When did our politics become a space where one cannot even talk about religion?” Shah had said.
While the Congress found itself reduced to virtual irrelevance in Delhi politics with the rise of the AAP, it managed to win nine wards in the 2022 municipal polls, seven of which were in Muslim-dominated areas, including Okhla, Mustafabad and Seelampur, which had sitting AAP MLAs.
In 2013, of the eight seats that the Congress managed to win, four were Muslim-dominated ones. However, in 2015 and 2020, the party drew a blank, as the AAP swept the polls, winning big in all Muslim-majority constituencies.
“It can now be argued that the Congress was able to hold on to its Muslim support in 2013 not due to any great affection for it among the community, but because Muslims were unsure whether the AAP was in a position to defeat the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). Once they saw the winning capability of the AAP, they shifted in considerable numbers…” a Lokniti-CSDS study had observed after the 2015 assembly polls.
However, in recent months, there has been a political flux over the city’s Muslim votes, which also became evident with leaders of the community switching sides. Chaudhry Zubair Ahmad, who had won a municipal ward on a Congress ticket, has now been fielded by the AAP from Seelampur, while Abdul Rehman, the sitting MLA, has joined the Congress, and named as its candidate from the seat.
Also Read: Gloves off ahead of Delhi elections, why AAP is on the warpath against Congress
