Upping the ante on the BJP-Shiv Sena state government for dragging its feet on reservations for Muslims, the hardline All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is using the issue to make further inroads into the community. The party has threatened to protest against the state if it does not concede to its demand.

Led by the Owaisi brothers from Hyderabad, the AIMIM managed to make a spectacular debut in the state assembly polls last year by winning two Muslim-dominated seats, one more than the Raj Thackeray-led MNS.

The previous Congress-NCP government had promulgated ordinances in a controversial move to grant quotas to Marathas (16%) and Muslims (5%) by categorizing them as educationally and socially backward. In November, the Bombay high court (HC) had stayed the Maratha quota and reservations in jobs for Muslims, while not staying 5% quota for Muslims in education.

In the legislature's winter session, the Fadnavis government passed a bill for Maratha quota but did not table a legislation for similar benefits to Muslims. Fadnavis later said they were taking legal advice to navigate their way out of the tangle. The ordinance on affirmative action for Muslims has lapsed in January.

AIMIM chief and Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi had recently held a public meeting in Beed in Marathwada to demand quotas for Muslims. "We will agitate across Maharashtra for the quotas and move the courts," Waris Pathan, AIMIM MLA from Byculla, told dna.

He accused the Congress and NCP of cheating the Muslim community by not approving the reservations for the 15 years they were in power, but pushing it through just before the polls as an "election gimmick"."We don't trust the Shiv Sena and BJP, but at the same time we don't trust the Congress and NCP either," said Imtiaz Jaleel, former journalist and AIMIM MLA from Aurangabad Central. The party had asked all its units to submit memoranda to government officials at the local level.

Some sections from within the Muslims question the logic of granting quotas to the community as a whole and point to loopholes in the argument. Moreover, a large section is already covered under categories like OBC, VJNT and ST.

However, Jaleel said reservations for the community were based on facts revealed by reports of the Rajinder Sachar, Ranganath Mishra and Mehmood-ur-Rehman committees, which pointed to the social and economic backwardness and destitution among Muslims. Responding to objections regarding the quota, Jaleel questioned why the HC had not stayed reservations for Muslims in education, when it had rejected similar concessions for Marathas outright.

The state government's Mehmood-ur-Rehman committee had underlined that just 2.2% of Muslims, who comprise just around 10.6% of Maharashtra's population and are the second-largest religious group in the state, had completed graduation. The percentage of women graduates is at an even lesser 1.4% and more than half (59.4%) of Muslims are below the poverty line in urban areas, while the figure is marginally higher in the hinterlands at 59.8%.

The AIMIM, which has its roots in the Razakars who supported the Nizam of Hyderabad and resisted the state's integration into India, fielded 24 nominees in the assembly polls. Though just two could win, it gave a scare to established parties in many seats and also indicated the massive anger against "secular" parties like the Congress.

However, the AIMIM's success has led to consternation among liberal Muslims who fear that rabble-rousing politics may deepen the communal divide and affect mainstreaming of Muslims.

The AIMIM plans to encash the disenchantment of Muslims and forge alliances with Dalit outfits. For a political opening in the 2017 civic elections, the party is trying to expand at the ward level and build up a strong organizational structure on lines of political archfoe Shiv Sena.