The NCP, which has projected its national general secretary and well-known Muslim leader Tariq Anwar as its chief ministerial candidate in Bihar, has raised the contentious issue of the Muslim chief minister by accusing leaders from major parties of trying to oust Bihar’s only Muslim chief minister after a brief time in office.
Abdul Gafoor of the Congress was the only Muslim chief minister Bihar ever had and he served in the post for only 15 months from July 1973 to April 1975. Bihar, with 16.5 per cent of its population being Muslims, is home to the highest number of Muslims in India after Uttar Pradesh.
“While all parties have shied away from the promise of either a Muslim chief minister or a deputy chief minister, Bihar’s people need to know the bitter truth about how RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan and chief minister Nitish Kumar had aggressively worked together to remove the state’s only Muslim chief minister in the mid-1970s,” said Anwar to this newspaper in an interview. “We will explain to the people how the Muslims have been continuously exploited politically merely as a vote bank and how all these top leaders have been anti-Muslim all through,” said Anwar, a Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra who has previously been elected MP from Bihar’s Katihar several times and has also served as the Bihar Congress president.
While the RJD-LJP combine has left no scope for a Muslim chief minister or deputy chief minister and no such scope existing within the ruling JD(U)-BJP currently, the fact that the Congress has not projected anyone as its chief ministerial candidate is likely to help the NCP in at least 100 constituencies where the Muslim votes play decisive roles in elections, said observers.
Hopeful of winning “a good number of seats” in at least 50 constituencies in Bihar’s Muslim-concentrated districts, the NCP banks largely on Anwar’s clean image and party supremo Sharad Pawar’s contributions as Union agriculture minister for farmers’ welfare. The NCP, which has started attracting leaders from various parties lately, is likely to field candidates in 150 seats, said sources.