The Muslim votes in the Adilabad Lok Sabha constituency, which is reserved for Scheduled Tribes, is likely to split between the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and Congress in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.
Though it comprises less than 10% of the nearly 15 lakh electorate, it is considered sizable enough to swing the result one way or the other in a closely-fought election and its unstinted support to a party can provide all-important morale-booster to cadres.
The TRS attributes its resounding victory in the last Assembly elections to the solid backing that it received from the Muslim electors. For instance, the ruling party in Telangana won Mudhole, Adilabad, Khanapur, Sirpur and Nirmal Assembly constituencies owing to the support by Muslim voters.
“In Khanapur locality of Adilabad constituency, a minority majority area, we got 600 of the 800 votes polled then,” said B. Goverdhan Reddy, senior TRS leader and campaigner for party MP seat candidate G. Nagesh, of the extent of the support his party received from the minority community voters. These voters are being wooed in the current campaign as well.
Different priorities
“The trend, however, may not be seen in the Parliament elections as priorities are different,” observed a Muslim leader of the Congress party. “At least a good number of voters in our community will side with the Congress to keep away Bharatiya Janata Party from returning to power,” he explained.
The Muslim voters, who are estimated to be about 1.2 lakh in strength, are mostly concentrated in towns and semi-urban areas in the seven Assembly segments of Adilabad (ST) Lok Sabha constituency.
The Adilabad town in Adilabad segment has an estimated 35,000 electors from this community, while Nirmal town in the same segment has around 30,000 and Bhainsa town in Mudhole segment has about 25,000 electors, with the remaining in Kagaznagar and Sirpur towns in Sirpur constituency, Ichoda of Boath (ST) constituency, Khanapur in Khanapur (ST) segment, and Asifabad, Jainoor and Kerameri in Asifabad constituency.
There are rumours that Muslim clergy and leaders at the national level have issued a ‘dictat’ to the minority electors in this Parliamentary constituency to vote for Congress. The former are said to have pointed out that backing the ruling TRS could be futile as the regional party is likely to align with the BJP if it returns to power at the Centre.