Dhubri under Ajmal’s spell

Sakina Khatun, a brick-kiln labourer near Asharikandi, a potters’ village near Dhubri, is happy that she could meet Maulana Badruddin Ajmal last week. “He is a great man. He touched my ailing son and prayed for him. I will vote for him,” said Sakina, mother of five. All India United Democratic Front chief and Mumbai-based […]

Sakina Khatun, a brick-kiln labourer near Asharikandi, a potters’ village near Dhubri, is happy that she could meet Maulana Badruddin Ajmal last week. “He is a great man. He touched my ailing son and prayed for him. I will vote for him,” said Sakina, mother of five.

All India United Democratic Front chief and Mumbai-based perfume tycoon Ajmal has evolved his own way of attracting voters. The sitting MP from Dhubri, where more than 13 lakh of the 15.47 lakh voters are Muslims, Ajmal turns into a faith-healer and preacher rather than a politician to ensure votes. In 2009, he had polled more than 50 per cent of the valid votes and defeated Anwar Hussain of the Congress by over 1.84 lakh votes. “This time he will get more than 70 per cent of the votes,” said Aminur Rahman Ahmed, district president of the AIUDF.

The economically weaker among Muslims, most of them of migrant origin (Dhubri district shares a porous border with Bangladesh), in villages across the constituency rush to Ajmal who would ‘potentise’ water to cure ailments rather than ask for setting up a health centre or a school. “But our campaign is more hi-tech than that of other parties,” claimed Ahmed, pointing out that hundreds of CDs have been distributed across the constituency for people to see how powerfully Ajmal speaks in Parliament. In Hatifota, a village on the national highway, dozens of people sitting inside a roadside election office of the AIUDF intently watch a video clipping of Ajmal. “Maulana saheb is a very big leader. When he speaks in Parliament, there is pindrop silence. And listen, he is speaking about us there,” pointed out Abdul Qasem Ali, a local organiser of the AIUDF who takes the video to villages that Ajmal has not been able to personally visit. “He also has a helicopter,” Ali tells the people.

The AIUDF, which was born in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down the controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act in 2005, has established itself so strongly among Muslims of migrant origin in Assam that it is currently the largest opposition party in the assembly, ahead of AGP and BJP. “No party can defeat Ajmal in Dhubri,” asserted district president Ahmed, dismissing Congress claims that Muslims would shift allegiance.

“Ajmal is a one-man party. He is a huge failure as an MP. Over Rs 15 crore out of Rs 20 crore MPLAD funds have remained unutilised in this constituency because he has hardly come. He is either in his hometown Hojai in Nagaon district or in Mumbai or in Dubai,” said the Congress’s Nazibul Omar who is coordinating the campaign for party candidate Wazed Ali Choudhury. But the reality is that only one among the 10 assembly segments under Dhubri Lok Sabha constituency is with the Congress, with AIUDF holding seven. Lone Congress MLA Abu Taher Bepari is lying low because he wanted his nephew Nazrul Haque to be the party candidate here.

“Neither the Congress nor the AIUDF MP has done anything for Dhubri and Goalpara, two districts that constitute most of this Lok Sabha constituency. No major hospital or educational institution has been set up here, crimes have only gone up every day,” says Bimal Oswal, whose father Pannalal Oswal, the 1999 BJP candidate for Dhubri, was gunned down by the ULFA during the election campaign.

The BJP has fielded Debamoy Sanyal, a physician in Dhubri which has only 2.90 lakh Hindu voters.