Owaisi dreams of installing the next Indian President. But before that he is dreaming of defeating the BJP in Uttar Pradesh

Asaduddin Owaisi wants to defeat the BJP in the next Presidential election. However, Owaisi has admitted that for the same to happen, the saffron party needs to be defeated in Uttar Pradesh.

“The next President may be decided by 3 regional parties. Hopefully, inshallah BJP will lose Uttar Pradesh & its numbers will come down further. This is going to be an interesting & unpredictable presidential election. The path to Rashtrapati Bhavan is through AP & Telangana,” tweeted Owaisi.

Owaisi’s dream of defeating the BJP in Uttar Pradesh is highly optimistic. The steps taken by him to win the elections so far would only ensure BJP’s victory. His decision to contest 100 seats in the UP assembly elections would polarize the campaign and the BJP would be the biggest benefactor.

The entry of AIMIM in alliance with Rajbhar’s SBSP is a big blow to the electoral prospects of the Samajwadi Party as the Muslim and the Rajbhar votes will get divided.

Rajbhar is a community in Eastern Uttar Pradesh having significant numbers. They have traditionally voted for SP, but to the BJP in 2017. However, a section was not happy with the BJP and Om Prakash Rajbhar, their tallest leader, formed a new party. SP was hoping to capitalize on the Rajbhar community’s dissatisfaction with the BJP but the plan catapulted itself.

Owaisi had already spoiled the show for RJD led Mahagathbandhan in the Bihar assembly election 2020 and his plans will do the same for SP in Uttar Pradesh. In the northern states, Owaisi allies himself to small caste-based parties and this helps him to win Muslim-dominated seats.

The rivals of the BJP – SP & BSP – are already performing very poorly in Uttar Pradesh. In the recent Uttar Pradesh Panchayat elections, BJP scored a big victory over its nearest rival, Samajwadi Party. So far, the results of 17 Zila Panchayat Adhyaksha (District Council chairperson) have been declared and BJP has won all except one, Etawah – the family bastion of Akhilesh Yadav.

In Western Uttar Pradesh, where the party was supposed to lose given the intensity of the ongoing farmers’ protests in the region, BJP won all the seats. In fact, in many districts including Agra, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Amroha, and Meerut, BJP’s candidates have been elected unopposed.

This shows that despite the entire media hullabaloo about BJP’s electoral prospects being harmed due to the farmers’ protests, it is still the most popular party among the electorates. Except for the protestors with ulterior motives, farmers do understand that the farm bills would free them from the tyranny of ‘mandis’ and will end up in boosting agricultural income.

BJP has proved itself to be invincible despite the manufactured dissent and protests. The entry of Owaisi only makes things worse for SP and BSP because he would prove to be ‘vote cutter’ especially on the seats where Muslim voters are in significant numbers.

In the 2017 Assembly elections, BJP managed to receive a gigantic mandate by securing a 41.4 per cent vote share, which translated to the party winning 325 seats in a 403-member state assembly. No one had anticipated a massive Yogi Adityanath wave in the state and the opposition and detractors were left dumbfounded at the magnitude of the victory.

Fast forward four years, and Yogi has become the tallest leader in the country. From developing UP into an industrial state to reducing crime to tackling the first and second wave of the coronavirus pandemic effectively, UP has grown strength to strength with Yogi at the helm.

Whatever chances the opposition parties had to defeat the BJP were killed by the entry of Owaisi in the election becasue it would raise the prospects of the incumbents and weaken the opposition because both the parties target the same voter base. Thus, Owaisi’s dream about defeating the BJP in Presidential elections would remain just a dream.