Former chairman of the Madhya Pradesh State Minorities, Ibrahim Qureshi claims, "Minorities play a significant role on over six dozen assembly and a dozen Parliamentary constituencies in the state." Qureshi, chairman of Muslim Education Society (MES) said, "The percentage of minority voters is around 40 to 45 in at least four assembly constituencies including three constituencies of the state are Bhopal North, Bhopal Central, Narela and, Burhanpur", at a recent survey conducted by the MP unit of MES.
"There are about a dozen constituencies including Indore, Mhow, Sironj, Shajapur, Agar, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Shujalpur, Neemuch and Mandsaur where the percentage of Muslim voters is above 30 per cent," he added.
Adding other constituencies Jawra, Mahipur, Ujjain, Rau, Neemuch and Ratlam have percentage is around 20-25 in 14 assembly constituencies. He said minority voters form 16-20 per cent of total votes are in at least 22 assembly constituencies and between 10 to 15 per cent in 62 assembly segments.
"Similarly, the minority voters are in an adequate number in 12 lok Sabha onstituencies, including Bhopal, Khandwa, Jabalpur, Sagar, Indore, Ujjain and Jhabua", Qureshi claimed.
He said, 15 Muslim populated assembly constituencies are reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST). Notably, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsi, Bodh and Jain minorities fall 70 per cent under backward class. Muslims is the largest minority community in the state that amounts to over 8 million about 10 per cent in state's total population of 750 million. The state assembly has only one member of the community and the community representation in Parliament is nil from the state.Madhya Pradesh sends 29 MPs to lok Sabha. The 230 member state Assembly is scheduled to go for elections later in this year.