The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) has said it will neither project nor bargain from prospective allies party chief Maulana Badruddin Ajmal’s name as a candidate for the Assam Chief Minister post.
The AIUDF said Mr. Ajmal’s name was invariably used as a bogey ahead of the Assam Assembly elections in a bid to polarise voters in a State where a section equates Muslims with “Bangladeshis” or “illegal migrants.”
The fear was being stoked this time because of a strong possibility of the AIUDF and the Congress fighting the 2021 polls together, party leaders said.
“As minorities, we want a healthy and constructive relationship with the majority community in Assam. Our party knows its limitations and has taken a conscious decision that it will not project a chief ministerial candidate if it is in a position to form a government in alliance with secular parties,” said Mamun Imdadul Haque Choudhury, AIUDF general secretary and MLA.
The Congress and the AIUDF had in August decided to join hands in a bid to dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance government in Assam after the 2021 polls.
The BJP termed their friendship an “unholy alliance” and said it would pave the way for Mr. Ajmal, who is the Lok Sabha member from Dhubri, to rule over the indigenous people of Assam as the Chief Minister.
“A section that thrives on polarisation of voters on religious lines deliberately uses the name of our party president [Mr. Ajmal]. He will never become the Chief Minister because the post is for our ‘big brother’, the Congress,” Mr. Choudhury said.
He referred to 1980 when Anowara Taimur of the Congress had become the Chief Minister during the peak of the Assam Agitation against “illegal foreigners.” The agitation, he reminded, intensified after her elevation to the post.
Hafiz Rafiqul Islam, another AIUDF legislator, said the BJP had no right to refer to the Congress-AIUDF friendship as unholy.
“The people are aware how the BJP formed a government in Jammu and Kashmir with the People’s Democratic Party, whose leader Mehbooba Mufti called Afzal Guru a martyr,” he said.
The Congress has 23 MLAs in the 126-member Assam Assembly while the AIUDF has 14. Both parties expect the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act sentiments in the State and economic downturn to work in their favour at the hustings.