AIMIM snaps ties with VBA, blames Ambedkar, says will contest 70 seats

State AIMIM chief Imtiaz Jaleel, MP, told The Indian Express that AIMIM has decided to contest the ensuing Maharashtra assembly elections on its own. "We are no more part of Vanchit Bahujan Agadhi," he said.

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Prakash Ambedkar (right) with Asaduddin Owaisi at a rally in Aurangabad. (Express file photo)

Just a year after it was formed, Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi has fallen apart as one of its key constituency AIMIM has walked out after repeated seat-sharing talks failed.

AIMIM blamed Ambedkar for the parting of ways, saying he was inflexible and was underrating Asaduddin Owaisi’s party. State AIMIM chief Imtiaz Jaleel, MP, told The Indian Express that AIMIM has decided to contest the ensuing Maharashtra assembly elections on its own. “We are no more part of Vanchit Bahujan Agadhi,” he said.

Citing differences with Ambedkar, Jaleel said, “For past two months, we have been holding discussions over seat-sharing. We had placed demand for 74 seats and were ready to come down. However, Ambedkar repeatedly offered us eight seats. He was not ready go beyond that. This is not acceptable to us. And therefore, we have decided to contest assembly elections on our own,” he said.

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Jaleel said Ambedkar was not flexible during talks and refused to increase the number of seats. “He offered us eight seats. We held several rounds of talks, believing that he might rethink and increase the seats. But he refused. He remained steadfast on his number,” he said.

Jaleel said Ambedkar believed that AIMIM does not have strong base to contest such a large number of seats. “He thinks that we can contest only eight seats. But we believe we have candidates on at least 70 seats. He was rating us low,” he said.

Stating that he will contest at least 70 seats in the ensuing elections, Jaleel said, “We will pick candidates from different backgrounds. They will not just be Muslim, but would be from different religions and castes,” he said.

The VBA was formed in March 2018. Ambedkar had merged his Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh with AIMIM. It had held its first session in September last year in Solapur which had witnessed a huge turnout. Though no candidate of VBA, including the party chief won the Lok Sabha elections, it is believed the presence of VBA candidates led to the defeat of at least nine candidates belonging to the Congress-NCP. State Congress president Ashok Chavan was among those lost due to the presence of a VBA candidate in Nanded.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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