At a time when Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party lost Rampur and Azamgarh seats in the bypolls in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh indicating the party’s loosening grip over minority votes, four of the five MLAs of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) on Wednesday joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar. With 80 legislators, the RJD has now become the single largest party in the 243-member Assembly, leaving behind the BJP at number two with 77 MLAs.
However, hours before the AIMIM MLAs joined the RJD in Bihar, Mr. Owaisi, while addressing a public rally in support of his party candidate in Bhopal for the civic polls, took a dig at former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath for “failing to keep his party’s flock together in the State”.
The four AIMIM MLAs who joined the RJD in the presence of Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav are: Mohd. Shahnawaj Alam (Jokihat), Mohd. Anzar Nayeemi (Bahadurpur), Mohd. Izhar Asfi (Kochadhaman) and Syed Ruknuddin Ahmad (Baisi). Now, only State AIMIM president Akhtarul Iman has remained with the party. In the 2020 Assembly elections, the AIMIM had contested 24 seats in Bihar and won five seats — two seats each in Kishanganj and Purnia districts and one in Araria district.
