NEW DELHI: The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a former ally of the Congress in Assam, has accused the INDIA bloc of Muslim bias, after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi ruled out any possibility of an alliance with it in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
AIUDF spokesperson and MLA Aminul Islam alleged that the alliance doesn’t want a Muslim face to emerge from the alliance. “We are not in the INDIA alliance as they don’t want any Muslim face to emerge from the alliance. At an all-India level, they don’t want faces like Badruddin Ajmal and Asaduddin Owaisi. They want to be hardline Hindus but want votes from Muslims. This is now the strategy of Congress,” Islam said.
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He also accused the Congress of betraying the AIUDF after the last Assam assembly elections. “Congress is a ‘gaddar party’. Last time they did alliance with us during the Assembly elections. They betrayed us during the Rajya Sabha and Presidential elections by cross-voting. We didn’t even want to go with the Congress for alliance but if we wanted to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), we should have united as an opposition,” Islam said.
Reacting to the comments made by the AIUDF legislator, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) Debabrata Saikia slammed the party and called it communal. “AIUDF has earlier made statements that indirectly created chaos, especially by their chief Badruddin Ajmal. They are a B team of the BJP and do vote bank politics in the name of the minority,” Saikia told The New Indian.
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Refuting the allegations of lack of Muslim representation in the INDIA alliance, Saikia stated that Congress has many minority MLAs in both Assam and other parts of the country. “Congress already has Muslim MLAs and it is the BJP who doesn’t have any minority MLAs. We as a party have enough minority representation,” the LoP added.
The Mahajot of opposition parties floated in Assam during the 2021 Assembly elections saw AIUDF and Congress together allying against the BJP. The All India United Democratic Front is the 3rd largest political party in Assam Legislative Assembly after BJP and INC.