Maharashtra polls and the falling Muslim MLA count: Will 2024 be any different?

They form around 12 per cent of Maharashtra’s estimated 125 million population. But Muslims have only a peripheral presence in the state’s political landscape. The number of Muslims elected to the legislative assembly has seen a gradual decline over the years—just 10 of the 288 MLAs in the last election in 2019.
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 them, 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, marginally rising to 10 in 2019.
This comes at a time Muslims are seen as slipping on development indices. In 2014, state government-appointed committee under former IAS officer Mehmood-ur-Rehman noted that 59.8 per cent Muslims in rural and 59.4 per cent in urban areas were below the poverty line, with just 2.2 per cent graduates. The community, which is the largest minority in Maharashtra, has just 4.2 per cent representation in the police while accounting for 28.3 per cent 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 community candidates from other religious denominations has generally become tough.
While the BJP has not nominated any Muslim candidate for the upcoming election, the Shiv Sena, led by chief minister Eknath Shinde, has renominated minister Abdul Sattar from his constituency of Sillod in Aurangabad (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar).
Ally Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar has, however, put up Muslim candidates, such as Nawab Malik (Mankhurd Shivajinagar), Sana Malik (Anushaktinagar), Zeeshan Siddiqui (Vandre East), Hasan Mushrif (Kagal) and Najib Mulla (Mumbra Kalwa). Incidentally, the 78-member state legislative council has just one Muslim MLC—Idris Naikwadi of the NCP.
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has nominated eight Muslim candidates. This includes Haroon Khan of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
In the Lok Sabha elections this year, Muslims had solidly backed the MVA, giving it a swashbuckling victory on 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 community votes.
A senior leader of a smaller MVA constituent said that despite any resentment or grouses against the under-representation of Muslims in politics, the community would back the Opposition with the aim of keeping the BJP out of power.
However, Marathi Muslims, that is Muslims who are originally from Maharashtra and can speak Marathi, complain that the political space for Muslims is often dominated by emigrants 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 party 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 then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Incidentally, Antulay was the only Muslim elected to the Lok Sabha from Maharashtra in 2004. After a hiatus, Syed Imtiaz Jaleel of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) was elected from Aurangabad in 2019. At present, Maharashtra has no Muslim MP in the Lok Sabha.
While Maratha leader Manoj Jarange-Patil, whose protest for the dominant Marathas to be classified in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, had joined hands with Muslim and Dalit leaders, their plans to support candidates across the state have fallen through. Veteran Muslim leaders like Shabbir Ahmed Ansari of the All India Muslim OBC Organisation admit that the chances of Marathas supporting any Muslim nominees en masse were slim.
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