The Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) plans to contest at least six of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state, a top party leader said here on Friday. AIMIM state President Syed Imtiaz Jaleel, MP, said that the party will put up candidates from Mumbai, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Nanded, Dhule plus two in Muslim-dominated constituencies in Vidarbha, the eastern part of Maharashtra.
Their names are likely to be announced shortly by the party, which hopes to contest all six Parliament seats solo, unlike 2019, when it was in alliance with the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi of Prakash Ambedkar both in Parliamentary and Assembly elections. After the Assembly elections held that year (2019), the partnership broke and both went their separate ways, though AIMIM won two seats and VBA scored nothing.
In the run-up to the 2024 elections, the AIMIM had made open appeals to be admitted to the state Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and also the national INDIA bloc. However, it was given a royal snub by the wary MVA-INDIA. As most parties suspect AIMIM's intentions and credentials, after the purported damage it allegedly caused to the non-saffron parties in the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
Interestingly, in 2014 and 2019 Assembly elections, the AIMIM had bagged two seats each and in the last Lok Sabha (2019) polls, the party nominee Jaleel won the then Aurangabad seat, dealing a shock defeat to the then undivided Shiv Sena veteran Chandrakant Khaire, a two-time MLA and 4-time MP.
