“I’m saying Muslims are very secular. Muslims need to be communal. They don’t vote for their own people,” Aam Admi Party leader Shazia Ilmi said while participating in a meeting.
Although her statement was not part of a public speech, but the video of her statement went viral on the social media networks. The national television channels made it a big issue. All the political parties including her own AAP were quick to react. “AAP does not believe in this kind of politics nor does it endorse it,” the AAP said. The BJP criticised her statement while the Congress party too condemned her remarks.
Although all political parties took no time in branding Shazia Ilmi’s remarks as communal, none bothered to have a look at the statistics which clearly proves that Shazia Ilmi was not wrong in pointing out that Muslims are too secular and they need to vote for the candidates of their own community to increase their representation in the elected bodies. Almost all political parties appear to have conspired to confine the Muslim leadership in India.
For the sake of reference and in view of Shazia Ilmi’s statement, we would like to reproduce a few facts that we already published in our earlier editions.
Population-wise, the Muslims should have been the most powerful group in India. As per the 2001 Census, Muslims comprise almost half the population in 18 of the 593 districts in the country and have decisive votes in 80 of 543 Lok Sabha seats. Further analysis show that Muslim voters can play a crucial role in as many as 179 districts in the country.
There are 57 districts having more than 20 per cent Muslim population while as many as 34 districts have a population between 15 and 20 per cent. A whopping 88 districts have a population of 10-15 per cent Muslims. In multi-party set up, where even one percent votes can impact the results, one can imagine the impact of Muslim votes in these 179 districts.
However, this impact gets minimised as each Lok Sabha seat have different boundaries compared to districts. Although the boundaries of Lok Sabha constituencies were drawn and re-drawn four times based on the recommendations of Delimitation Commissions constituted in 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002, the most significant were the delimitations done in 1973 and 2002.
The delimitation done in 1976 was freezed until after the 2001 census and the delimitation done in 2008 will remain in force till the census to be done after 2026.
As many as nine general elections were held for the seats that were drawn in 1973.
Therefore, based on these boundaries and census of 1981, 1991 and 2001, the political analysts have been estimating the percentage of Muslim voters or population in each of these seats. Till 2004 general elections, about 12 seats had more than 50 per cent Muslims. As many as 62 seats had a population of 21 to 50 per cent. In 160 seats, Muslims were 11 to 20 percent while in 219 other constituencies Muslims were less than 10 percent.
Although no scientific approach has been adopted so far to calculate the exact or approximate number of Muslim voters in the country after the 2008 delimitation, different methodologies were adopted by the media houses, analysts and political parties in estimating the Muslims voters in Lok Sabha constituencies. These figures may not be fully accurate since their source could not be authenticated. However, basing these statistics can be used to get a broader picture of existence of Muslims votes across the country.
After 2008 delimitation, there are at least 77 Lok Sabha constituencies where the Muslim voters constitute more than 20 per cent of the total electorates. Of them, 13 seats have more than 50 per cent Muslim voters; eight have 40-50 per cent Muslim voters and the percentage is 30-40 in 23 constituencies and 20-30 in as many as 33 Lok Sabha seats.
However, Muslims have always failed to capatalise their strength. Except for 1980 and 1984 elections, when Congress swept the polls, the tally of Muslim MPs could not even touch 40. An analysis of all nine elections held from 1977 to 2004, show that several factors restricted their political growth.
Primarily, the allocation of tickets by major parties was improper and insufficient.
Secondly, non-Muslim voters have not voted for the Muslim candidates. Unlike the common perception that Muslim vote en bloc, in majority of seats, non-Muslim have voted en bloc against the Muslim candidates. Of course, there are a few examples where non-Muslims have elected Muslims, but such cases were very rare. Therefore, Muslim candidates preferred to contest from seats which have a sizeable population of Muslims. However, all the major parties shamelessly grabbed those seats in the garb of secularism.
In several other seats where Muslims are in large numbers, Muslims lost due to division of votes. The growth of BJP and several so-called secular parties have spoiled the prospects of Muslim candidates getting elected to the Lok Sabha. In many constituencies, Muslims preferred a non-Muslim candidate of a “secular” party over a Muslim candidate. However, there were some seats like Hyderabad which Muslims were able to win and retain primarily due to polarisation of votes. Shockingly, several seats where Muslims constituted more than 20 percent of the population were reserved for Scheduled Castes.
The 2009 general elections were not too different from the earlier elections. Though the delimitation gave more prominence to Muslim votes in several constituencies across the country, the community failed to capatalise the same. The political parties too adopted the old means of suppressing the emergence and growth of Muslim politics.
Shockingly, no serious approach was ever made by any Muslim political or non-political group to popularize the Muslim-dominated constituencies in order to pressurize the major political parties to give ticket to a Muslim candidate. Instead, the statistics were kept under several wraps from the voters. Although a few groups made representations to major parties asking them to give more tickets to Muslims, but the potential seats which can be won by them were not identified properly.
The same policy was adopted by all political parties in 2014 elections and not many Muslim candidates were given tickets to contest this crucial election. Therefore, the number of Muslims MPs in Lok Sabha is likely to remain more or less same in 2014.