A day after she and the BJP suffered a colossal drubbing in the Delhi Assembly polls, Kiran Bedi on Wednesday blamed a fatwa by Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari, urging Muslims to support AAP, for her defeat. Asserting that she should not be blamed for the party’s rout, Bedi also shot a letter to the Election Commission alleging that “fatwas impact the freedom of choice to vote.”
Introspecting the results, Bedi came out with a new angle to the party’s drubbing. “I have been told that a fatwa led to my defeat. The Election Commission should enquire into this. In fact, they should do a case study on how fatwas affect votes,” she said. Bedi claimed that though she was leading in the vote count, her vote-share started dropping when counting of votes in a Muslim-dominated area of her constituency was taken up.
A day ahead of the polls on February 7, Bukhari appealed to Muslims to vote for AAP but the party promptly rejected the offer. Though it was an appeal by Bukhari, several BJP leaders called it fatwa. “I was told that during the vote count in Krishna Nagar I was leading but when the counting of votes of the area, where fatwa might have had an impact, was carried out, it started to drop,” Bedi said, adding “I lost by 2,000 votes when the counting reached that area.”
Bedi even went out to express the challenges faced by new entrants in poll battle and tweeted, “Rules of electioneering and projections need to be redressed by the Election Commission if new comers are to enter politics. Need for some audits.” She further said the EC should inquire the issue to know whether the Shahi Imam’s appeal to Muslims a day before the polls had any impact on the electoral outcome. “Fatwa means a diktat, a directive, it also means a hukumnama in a way.
The EC should examine whether fatwas issued last minute before the elections are good for democratic process or not I want the Election Commission to inquire this. (Then only) it will be clearly known whether fatwa had an impact on the voters or not,” she said. Meanwhile, AAP defector and new BJP entrant Shazia Ilmi went to meet the former IPS officer as a sign of support from the party.