Janata Dal (U) leader and five-time MlA Shoaib Iqbal may join the Congress on Thursday, saying his move is to prevent the “division of Muslim votes” in the national Capital in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Iqbal has said that he would be joining the Congress on Thursday at 2 pm. The Matia Mahal MlA said he would be joining the Congress at its Akbar Road headquarters with his son Allay Mohammad Iqbal and nephew Khurram Iqbal, both councillors. While the Delhi Congress chose not to comment on the matter, sources said that Iqbal decided to join the party after meeting its vice-president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi.
Insiders say that Iqbal was keen to join the Congress to ensure that the Muslim voters in his constituency were not divided between the AAP and the Congress in the upcoming Assembly polls. The JD(U) leaders vote share had been consistently going down in the past 20 years. He had managed to secure 62 per cent votes in the 1993 Assembly polls. His vote share went up by three per cent in the 1998 polls. But Iqbal’s vote share went down to 52 per cent in 2003, 41 per cent in 2008 and 37 per cent in the 2013 Assembly polls. Iqbal’s move is also being interpreted in the political circles as a Congress ploy to woo back the Muslim voters in the national Capital. The community, which had been a traditional vote bank of the Congress in the city, had drifted away from the party in the recent lok Sabha elections. A large number of the Muslim voters had voted for the newbie AAP in the lok Sabha elections. The Congress could not register its win in any of seven Parliamentary seats.
In the previous assembly elections, the Congress had managed to win only eight of the 70 seats with the support of the Muslim votes. Of the eight seats won, four were Muslim candidates. Of the total 1.19 crore registered voters in Delhi, Muslims comprise about 15 per cent of the total electorate in the city.
The community plays a decisive role in those seats where their voter share is more than 30 per cent. While Matia Mahal has 48 per cent Muslim voters, Balli Maran has 38 per cent, Seelampur — 50 per cent, Babarpur — 35 per cent, Mustafabad -36 per cent, Okhla — 43 per cent and Kirari 30 per cent.