Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti which has been exuding confidence about the outcome of next month’s Assembly elections is sure it will get the Muslim vote this time as it did in the last election.
The TRS had extensive support from the Muslims in the 2014 elections and also in the elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
Telangana has the third largest Muslim population in south India after Kerala and Karnataka. Muslims are 12.7 per cent of the population.
Muslims can be a deciding factor in 53 constituencies. Leaving aside the seven seats in Hyderabad’s Old City, a stronghold of the AIMIM, the remaining 46 seats across the state are very crucial in deciding the fate of the TRS as well as the Congress-led Mahakutami.
The TRS’s top leadership is confident that Muslims are with the TRS as the government had provided various welfare schemes for the community such as Shadi Mubarak, scholarships for Muslim students to study abroad, more than 206 residential schools for the minorities and monthly salaries for the Imams of mosques, distribution of clothes for poor members of the community and hosting Iftar dinners during Ramzan.
Moreover, the party has given Muslims representation in the government by making a Muslim the deputy chief minister, which has certainly impacted the Muslims.
With regard to the promise of increasing reservations for Muslims from four to 12 per cent, the party leadership claims that they had worked hard to complete the required formalities under law and passed the Bill in the Assembly, but it was up to the government at the centre to take a call on the issue.
If the party is re-elected, it will take this matter up with the centre, say TRS leaders.
The Congress too claims that it will get the Muslim vote as it was the Congress that had originally given the four per cent reservations to Muslims and the TRS had only continued the policy but had failed to fulfil its promise of enhancing it to 12 per cent reservations.
The Congress is equating a vote for the TRS with a vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was Chief Minister of Gujarat when large numbers of Muslims were massacred in communal riots. They say the Muslims of the state are well aware of the tacit understanding between the TRS and BJP and they will not fall into the TRS’s trap.
