According to sources, Asaduddin’s ambitious mission to establish AIMIM in UP is soon to be shattered. Reports have been making rounds that party’s national spokesperson Syed Asim Waqar is all set to quit the party and join Congress, as the party’s bid for the state’s significant Muslim vote bank.
A person familiar with the matter said that Waqar is expected to join the Congress in Delhi on Wednesday, giving a big blow to Owaisi’s AIMIM, where he served for nearly a decade.
As the spokesperson of the party, he had gained considerable prominence within Uttar Pradesh’s political grounds. This defection can potentially impact Owaisi’s bid to win seats in UP. Sources further revealed that Asim Waqar had been unhappy for some time with the decisions taken by the UP unit of AIMIM. Before joining Owaisi’s outfit, Waqar had spent nearly two decades as a member of the Samajwadi Party. Sources reveal that Minority Congress President and Rajya Sabha MP Imran Pratapgarhi played a major role in his planned move to the latter’s party. However, there has been no official confirmation from either the party he is departing or the party he is about to join.
The Congress and the Samajwadi Party have an alliance in Uttar Pradesh. Although formal discussions between the two parties on seat sharing have not begun, inclusion of prominent figures will strengthen Congress’s claim for more seats. Meanwhile, Asaduddin Owaisi hasn’t revealed yet how many seats will he be contesting for in the upcoming assembly elections. He, however, asserted that the party will definitely fight the polls and win seats.
“Our party has not yet decided how many seats we will contest. We will definitely contest the elections, and if we perform better than before, it will soon become clear which seats we will contest, where, and what the number will be. Secondly, the party’s organisation has become much stronger than before. An understanding has developed among the public that these false accusations against the AIMIM party, and the repeated propagation of such allegations, create an illusion that they (the NDA) are coming to power. They always invoke secularism, a secularism that has no connection with reality,” he was quoted as saying when asked about his election plans.