Azaduddin Owaisi vigorously retorted to Congress for blaming the AIMIM and himself for the party's defeat in the Bihar Assembly elections based on data.
"The NDA has won only in six of the 20 seats it which we contested. In five of these, the AIMIM candidates had less votes than the winning margin of NDA. This simply means that they would have still won even if we did not compete. It was the grand coalition which failed to defeat the NDA in these seats" tweeted Owaisi.
He asserted that AIMIM would contest wherever elections are held and also asked who they are to deny the constitutionally sanctioned rights.
"We won five of the 20 seats contested. The Grand Alliance won the remaining nine and the NDA won six seats. Their majority is higher than our votes in the seats won by the NDA. The RJD has fielded a former leader of the militant-backed Durga Vahini in Sherghati. Yet what do these critics say about fundamentalism and vote-splitting?" -Owaisi asked.befittling
The NDA candidates won in Chhattisgarh, Barari, Pranpur, Narpatganj, Sahebganj and Rani Ganj where Owaisi's party contested. He released the vote status list in these constituencies.
Accordingly, the BJP got a majority of 20,635 in Chhatapur, AIMIM had only 1990 votes. In Barari, the JDU got a majority of 10,438 votes. However the AIMIM got only 6,598 votes. In Pranpur, the BJP has a majority of 2,972 votes while the AIMIM could acquire only 508 votes.
In Narpatganj, the BJP got a majority of 28,610 votes while the AIMIM got 5,495 votes. In Sahebganj, the NDA's VIP polled a majority of 15,333 votes while Owaisi's party got only 4,055 votes.
It was only in Raniganj alone, had the AIMIM candidate not there, the grand alliance would have won. Here the NDA got a majority of 2,304 while the AIMIM got 2,412 votes. If the RJD candidate had got this vote, the grand alliance would have won one more seat.
Owaisi had made it clear in the news conference in Hyderabad that only after the grand alliance of the Congress-RJD-Left parties turned against him did the AIMIM contest in 20 constituencies with smaller parties like Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party. He accused that Congress paved way for the BJP's rise to power in India and asked why the Congress had failed in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.