Ajmal to play Hindu Card in Silchar

SILCHAR, April 7: “Since Independence the Congress had been playing the Muslim vote bank card. Now time has arrived for me to pay this back to them and just see how I play the Hindu Card in Silchar,” a confident Badaruddin Ajmal told mediapersons in a brief recess he found amid a series of public rallies, attended by thousands of people.

How tactfully the AUDF boss could play the Hindu Card, whether the Bengali Hindu voters would favour an ‘outsider’ Muslim in this ‘one and only Bengali Hindu’ seat were the questions that would definitely dog the AUDF. Even Ajmal could realize this. But one thing is sure that the AUDF had aimed to penetrate the traditional tea garden labour votes.

It is evident that the 1, 85,244 (18.93 per cent) tea garden labour voters would definitely play a deciding factor. Some leaders representing the garden with considerable influence in the community had already enrolled themselves with the AUDF. Ajmal was seen desperately wooing the Manipuri community too, which constitutes of 6.33 per cent. But the bad news for Ajmal is that the Muslim community in Silchar is apparently a divided house over the question of accepting Ajmal, an outsider in the valley. Inspite of AUDF wave in 2006 Assembly poll, AUDF could manage to win a single seat among seven in Cachar district. They did not even field any candidates in Silchar where Sontosh Mohan Dev’s wife Bithika was a candidate and in Sonai, where the Congress candidate was Kutub Ahmed, a close confidante of Dev.

In the last Panchayat election, the AUDF polled just 3.19 per cent of total votes indicating the low ebb in the AUDF wave. Further, Ajmal is suspected by a large number of Muslims as having a tacit understanding with the BJP as his motive is to reportedly defeat the Congress. Cachar Jamiat had been keeping themselves virtually aloof from Ajmal, who is the State president of this powerful Islamic organization like Ahle-Sunnat and cleric like Ahmed Sayeed Gobindpuri had openly rejected Ajmal on the ground that his candidature would only facilitate the BJP. THE SENTINEL