After Maharashtra, Telangana Muslims unhappy with Congress too?

The Maharashtra election has produced a historic mandate for the BJP-led Mahayuti, putting Devendra Fadnavis back in the chief minister’s chair. While the winning alliance spruces itself to take the reins of the state again, the Congress – or at least its well-wishers and supporters – are struggling to come to terms with the Maharashtra mandate. The expectation with which the election was fought, that the MVA had an edge, has been thoroughly annihilated.

All data points emerging from analyses after the result point to the fact that the Mahayuti has been successful in giving something across the lines of community, caste and religion to get their vote. The CSDS-Lokniti survey, seen as the most reliable for understanding election results, shows this very clearly in cold numbers. It says that the trend of Marathas and OBCs putting their weight behind the BJP, which started in 2014, has only solidified, reversing the result of the 2024 general election where the Congress made major gains. The CSDS data shows that the only communities that voted for the Congress-led MVA more than for the Mahayuti were the Adivasis and the Muslims.

Muslim voter abandoning Congress?

The Muslim vote in Maharashtra was assumed both by the Congress and observers to ‘belong’ to the MVA. But look at what the numbers say. In the 2024 GE, MVA’s Muslim vote was 50%. In the assembly election, the community's votes for the party declined by a massive 14%+ to 35.4%. 

There are 31 seats in the assembly that are considered ‘Muslim-dominated’, which means more than 20% Muslim population, largely in the Mumbai-Thane area and relatively well-off. Of that the Mahayuti won as many as 18, leaving only 12 for the MVA. That is a loss of 12 seats for the MVA from the general election. Now, it can be argued that the Shiv Sena-UBT has more of a hold in the area, but the Congress was very much part of the alliance and is always seen as the traditional ‘keeper’ of the Muslim vote.

This erosion of the minority vote is not just in Maharashtra. If that loss has not woken up the Congress yet, it really needs to shake off its slumber because Muslim disaffection is beginning to show itself quite visibly in a state that the party has fought hard to win: Telangana, which also shares a border with Maharashtra.

Ripple effect in Telangana

The main sore point that several Muslim organisations and political players point out is that there is still no minister in the state’s cabinet from the community. For context, more than 12% of Telangana’s population is Muslim, with half of them in Hyderabad. While the Congress leadership says that there are no Muslim MLAs in the state assembly, but analysts point out that there is an option to appoint a Muslim MLC and make that person a minister. They point out that the previous BRS government’s home minister and deputy CM Mohammed Mahmood Ali was one such case.

It is also being pointed out that the state government led by Revanth Reddy is yet to fulfil several of its manifesto promises, including a hike in the minority welfare budget and a subsidy scheme for minority youth. A flashpoint was also created when the state government reportedly altered the state’s official emblem to remove the iconic Charminar, which is Hyderabad’s biggest cultural identity and an enduring image of the state. The move has now been shelved.

Another major issue that has created an issue within the community is the development of the Musi riverfront, which will end up demolishing thousands of homes. Muslim organisations claim that most of them belong to the minority community. The opposition BRS has made this an issue, saying it will give free legal aid to those being displaced.

There are several other allegations that are being made against the state government, including going soft on several communal incidents targeting minorities.

Though the Telangana elections are still some way off, given the fact that the BJP will leave no stone unturned to take the state away from the Congress, minority unhappiness is something that the ruling dispensation simply can’t afford. The threat is not just from the BJP but also the wounded BRS, which claims to have done far more for Muslims than the present government is doing.

If there are no corrective steps taken to calm these fears and concerns, the Congress could again be looking at a key vote bloc abandoning it, much like in Maharashtra.