HYDERABAD : Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) failed to win any of the eight seats it had contested in the Jharkhand state elections. The party, which recently won the Kishanganj assembly seat in Bihar in a by-election and two assembly segments in the Maharashtra state polls, was hopeful of winning a seat in Jharkhand as well.

“We had contested only eight seats in the elections, and we did not win any of them. We have to check the details of the results," a senior AIMIM leader from Hyderabad, where the party is headquartered, said. In Jharkhand, the AIMIM was expected to have an impact in seats with a sizeable chunk of Muslim voters.

However, the party failed to impress in the eight seats out of the total 81 it contested. In Jamshedpur West, AIMIM candidate Reyaz Sharif managed to get just 1.57% of the total vote share, as per counting till 3 pm. In the Mahagama seat, the party’s Ashok Kumar Singh also managed to get just 1.58% of the total vote share.

In Maharashtra, the AIMIM had contested 44 assembly seats in the recently concluded state elections and managed to win the Malegaon and Dhule City seats, getting about 7.4 lakh votes. It was an increase from the 5 lakh votes in the 2014 polls, when it contested 24 seats, and a big boost for Owaisi, Lok Sabha member of parliament from the Hyderabad seat.

In the Kishanganj bypoll, AIMIM’s Qamrul Hoda won the seat with a margin of over 10,000 votes, defeating BJP’s Sweety Singh. Interestingly, the Congress lost its deposit, garnering just 25,825 votes, indicating a shift among Muslim voters. The seat falls under the Seemanchal region, which is one of the most backward areas In Bihar and where the AIMIM is presently concentrating with regard to the upcoming 2020 state elections in Bihar.

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