The Indian General Election is likely to be held in India between April and May 2024 to elect the members of the 18th Lok Sabha. Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, India TV-CNX conducted an opinion poll. The poll results revealed that while 61% of general voters and 70% of Forward Caste voters want PM Modi to continue as the Prime Minister of the country, 52% of the Muslims in India want the Congress scion Rahul Gandhi to take up the position.
The survey was performed in 48 Lok Sabha seats across 12 states in the country post-Bihar’s caste census.
The survey conducted by India TV-CNX further stated that 14% of Muslims think that Arvind Kejriwal should become the Prime Minister of the country while 8% would vote for West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, 6% for Nitish Kumar, 8% for Akhilesh Yadav and 5% to Asaduddin Owaisi. Meanwhile, only 3% of the Muslims want current Prime Minister Narendra Modi to continue as the PM.
देश के मुसलमान 2024 में किसे बनाना चाहते हैं प्रधानमंत्री ?
— India TV (@indiatvnews) October 3, 2023
देखिए, क्या कहता है #IndiaTV_CNX का ओपिनियन पोल..#BiharCasteCensus #PMModi #RahulGandhi #ArvindKejriwal #Elections2024 #IndiaTV_CNXOpinionPoll pic.twitter.com/IuSlDuPZ9I
Speaking of the Forward Caste voters, 70% of them want PM Modi to continue as the Prime Minister of the country while only 12% of them want to see Rahul Gandhi as the PM. Furthermore, 4%, 6%, and 1% of forward caste voters wish to see Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, and Nitish Kumar as the PM. Nobody wants to see the President of the Samajwadi Party Akhilesh Yadav and President of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi as India’s PM in the upcoming elections.
According to the poll, 61% of overall voters want Narendra Modi to serve as Prime Minister again. Among the other options, 21% want Rahul Gandhi, 3% each want Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal, 2% each voted for Nitish Kumar and Mayawati, and 6% want some other leader as the future Prime Minister.
Muslims supporting Congress in Karnataka and Telangana
Notably, the Congress party has always used Muslims and favoured them as they assisted them in the elections by becoming a strong vote bank. This was evident in the recently happened Karnataka elections in which the Congress party emerged as the single-largest party with 135 seats—well past the majority mark—to form a government in the state.
While the campaign for election saw alarming levels of polarisation, with opposition parties raising the matter of hijab and the Congress party declaring to ban the Hindu activist group, Bajrang Dal, it is worth taking into account how polarisation helped Congress to consolidate Muslim voters and divide Hindu votes in order to win the assembly elections in May this year.
The Muslim communities also banded together behind the Congress party, possibly to protect their religious interests, and voted en masse for the great old party’s candidates. During the election campaigns, the SDPI which is the political wing of the banned PFI had clearly stated their intention of campaigning for the Congress Party. Earlier it had decided to field 100 candidates, but a few days before the elections, the party said that it would field only 16 seats. The SDPI also later asked its workers to go door to door and campaign for Congress.
Also, in Telangana, the Muslims are firmly backing the Congress party. Md Ali Shabbir, a senior Congress leader in June this year stated that Muslims of Telangana were firmly backing the party and that the AIMIM would fail to make a dent in that vote bank.
Rahul Gandhi furthering anti-India stance at global level
The entire Congress party has been using Muslim voters to win the elections in the country, whether the general or assembly elections. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi especially has always favoured and extended support to the Muslim community. He has several times defamed India and Hindus on global platforms peddling lies that ‘Minority communities in India are under attack’. He made such statements against India in Washington, the Cambridge University, and also in New Delhi recently in September this year.
Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party have long sought to maintain the “minorities are in danger” rhetoric in order to solidify minority votes in an increasingly fragmented opposition, where each party is trying to build up its own vote bank in order to take on the Modi juggernaut, which draws its strength from broad support from all sections of society.
Aside from polarising the country’s political climate, the ‘minorities are in danger’ narrative is also used to portray the Centre as communal. Ordinary crimes are given a religious spin in order to either discredit and demean the Centre or consolidate the minority vote bank.
Non-Muslims, for example, accounted for more than 80% of those killed during the Nuh conflict. The violence began after Hindu pilgrims of the Jalabhishek Yatra were attacked by Islamists in Nuh, which is located in Haryana’s Muslim-majority area of Mewat. Even Hindus who did not take part in the parade were victims of the horrific dance of death that took place in Nuh and surrounding areas in late July and early August of this year.
Nonetheless, Congress, armed with its well-oiled ecosystem and an army of online trolls and supporting journalists, many of whom have turned into YouTubers after being unceremoniously fired for peddling propaganda under the guise of honest and upright journalism, blamed the Centre and Hindus for inciting the violence.
Congress has historically been a pro-Muslim party
Despite, donning the ‘pro-Hindutva’ hat from time to time, as per convenience, the Congress has historically been pro-Muslim, with appeasement programs topping the priority chart of the party. After all, it was the Nehruvian ‘visionary policy’ of Islamism in Congress that gave birth to the unwanted problem child called ‘Muslim Minority’.
Islamism in Congress politics started in a big way just after independence around 1950, when Congress started inducting, in its fold, the Muslim League leaders, members and supporters who did not migrate to Pakistan. Many of those ex-Muslim Leaguers rose to the level of Cabinet Minister at Central and State levels under Congress rule later.
Under Congress Rule, the ‘Waqf Act’ first came into being in India in 1954 and in 1964 Central Waqf Council was constituted under that Act. In August 2022, it came to light that the Congress-led-UPA government gifted 123 government properties in Lutyens’ Delhi to Waqf.
Rajiv Gandhi’s handling of the Shah Bano case (1986), to appease Muslim clerics, was another strong assertion of Islamism in Congress politics. In the Shah Bano case, Rajiv Gandhi allowed Sharia to crush the Indian Judiciary.
In the recent past one of the most glaring glimpses of the Congress party’s submission to Islamism was its decision to review AFSPA should it come to power in 2019.
Notably, the demand for the removal of AFSPA has long been the focus of radical Islamic organizations and far-left institutions inimical to Indian interests. These organizations have peddled the most nefarious of propaganda which has only served as a tool to radicalize the youth of Kashmir.
In addition to this, the 2019 Congress manifesto made other promises to the Muslim community as well. It said on page 42, “The Waqf Properties (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Bill, 2014 will be re-introduced and passed. Waqf properties will be restored to the legal trustees.” In addition to that, “Congress promises to uphold the character of Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia as minority educational institutions.”
Additionally, Congress’ support in Wayanad emanates from the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) which in turn is tied up with Jammat-e-Islami and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), both accused by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of conducting arms training camps across the state under the pretence of health awareness camps. In several police raids in the offices of PFI and SDPI in Kerala, weapons and arms stockpiling came to light in 2014. As many as 24 accused arrested belonged to these two parties.
Given all these incidents, it is clearly evident why around 52% of Muslims want to see Congress’ Rahul Gandhi as India’s next Prime Minister and why only 3% of them think that PM Modi should continue to serve in the position.
The next Indian general election in India is expected to be held between April and May 2024 to elect the members of the 18th Lok Sabha.
