UP ELECTION RESULTS 2022: AIMIM candidates lost deposits in 99 out of 100 seats, Mishra also flopped in Varanasi North

UP ELECTION RESULTS 2022: The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has not been able to save its deposits in 99 seats out of 100 that it had contested in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Although the party got a few more votes than what it had got in 2017, the Asaduddin Owaisi-led party failed miserably even in Muslim-majority areas and could not win a single seat.

It may be noted that AIMIM had fielded most of its candidates in those constituencies where Muslim population and percentage of voters is very high. In the last Assembly elections also, the AIMIM had given tickets to 38 candidates from such Muslim-dominated seats. All of its candidates had forfeited their deposits that time too.

However, party spokesperson Waris Pathan told Times Now that the party is growing in Uttar Pradesh. 

The only candidate to save his deposit is Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali from the Mubarakpur constituency. He was earlier in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). After leaving the BSP, he first approached the Samajwadi Party but the party denied him a ticket. Then he joined AIMIM and contested the Assembly elections from the Mubarakpur seat. According to the latest update on the Election Commission’s official website, he has got about 24% votes.

Deoband was one of the most important Assembly constituencies among the major Muslim-majority seats. Deoband is home to Darul Uloom Deoband, an Islamic seminary of the Deobandi sect of Sunni Islamic sect. AIMIM had given a ticket to Maulana Umair Madani, who could get only 3501 votes in the land of one of the biggest schools of Islamic doctrine. It is the Deobandi version of Sunni Islam that is followed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. BJP candidate Brijesh Singh won from Deoband.

Interestingly, AIMIM had given ticket to non-Muslim candidate Harish Mishra from the Varanasi North assembly seat. This social engineering move by AIMIM in Varanasi was seen as the equivalent of an alliance in Maharashtra with Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi in the 2019 general elections. In those elections, all the Dalit candidates of VBA contested on the symbol of AIMIM.