Hyderabad: Hyderabad headquartered All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (MIM) has made a breakthrough in Bihar by winning the by-poll for Kishangunj while pocketing two seats in Maharashtra.
However, it has lost the Aurangabad constituency which Imtiaz Jaleel had vacated to fight and win the Lok Sabha election from the same city. It also suffered a setback in the previously held Byculla in Mumbai which was controlled by Waris Pathan.
AIMIM candidate Mufti Ismail Abdul Khalique made an entry through Malegaon Central defeating sitting Congress MLA Asif Shaikh. Another candidate of MIM, Shah Faruk Anwar, defeated Rajwardhan Kadambande, an independent candidate, in Dhule. Both the candidates had joined the party quitting NCP a few months before the assembly polls.
Times of India quoted state MIM chief Imtiaz Jaleel as saying, “It’s a great achievement for our party. Asaduddin Owaisi, our party chief, was our trump card and his rallies swayed the voters. We will continue to strengthen our base in northern Maharashtra.”
The party had fielded 44 candidates for Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.
MIM during the past couple of years had even won several seats in the civic polls in Malegaon, Dhule and Jalgaon.
MIM candidate Qamrul Hoda, defeated Sweety Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kishanganj Assembly seat which fell vacant after Javed Alam of the Congress was elected to Parliament in May.
In 2015 the party had contested from six constituencies in Bihar but had failed to open an account there. It had also fielded its state chief Akhtarul Iman in the Lok Sabha election from Kishanganj earlier this year, but failed to make any headway.
In Maharashtra, the MIM was the runner up in five assembly segments.
MIM controls the Lok Sabha seat for the Hyderabad since 1984. It has seven seats in the Telangana Legislative Assembly.