Give Muslim candidates 20 percent seats in polls: Mumbai Congress leader

Senior Congress leader and former Cabinet minister Aslam Shaikh wants the party to give the Muslim community a deputy chief minister's post in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra. He also demanded that Muslims be given at least 20 per cent share in the party tickets for forthcoming Assembly elections.

Shaikh told mid-day that the Muslims had contributed a great deal to the party's success in the Lok Sabha elections and would help repeat the performance in the state elections as well. "Our community has not been given the DCM's post so far. We should get it because I'm confident that the MVA will beat Mahayuti hands down, and the Muslims will play a significant role in the victory," he added.

Aslam Shaikh, senior Congress leader

Shaikh said he would be contesting only from Malad West constituency where he has won thrice in a row since 2009. In the MVA government, he was the textiles, ports and fisheries development and guardian minister of Mumbai. Congress will be sharing 288 Assembly seats with Shiv Sena (UBT) and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar). In Lok Sabha, the party had failed to field Muslim candidates. The party had a Muslim CM in AR Antulay in 1980, but now it doesn't have any Muslims in the Legislative Council. One Muslim Rajya Sabha MP, who was nominated from Maharashtra against the locals' wish, is an outsider. However, it always had the community members in the lower house, albeit in small numbers.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, three Muslims - Amin Patel, Zeeshan Siddique and Aslam Shaikh saved the party's face by winning amidst ruins in Mumbai. Naseem Khan was unlucky to fall only 400 votes short of victory. Apart from these three, Varsha Gaikwad added one more seat, while the rest of the party candidates were defeated. Other than these five seats (Khan's included), the Congress is confident of wresting most others that comes its way in the seat-sharing formula for Mumbai's 36. Seat-sharing for Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra has not been finalised yet.

The Lok Sabha elections had seen a row over the denial of candidature to the Muslim aspirants. When denied a ticket from Mumbai North Central, Naseem Khan had resigned as the party's star campaigner. Last week, he was made a special invitee to the Congress Working Committee and placed alongside senior leader Balasaheb Thorat. Another senior Muslim leader Syed Muzaffar Hussain was appointed as the state Congress' working president through the same letter of appointment.

36
No of Assembly seats in Mumbai