Bihar voters have not only defeated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but even the right-wing Muslim party, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), is expected to taste massive defeat in all the six seats that it has contested. In fact, AIMIM may lose its deposits in some of the seats in East Bihar, adjacent to West Bengal, as it is nowhere close to the 16 percent mark, required to save the deposit.
So far AIMIM has received about 15,000 votes in one of the seats, Kochadhaman and about 14,000 votes in Baisi in East Bihar, while in the rest of the five seats it failed to touch a five digit mark. However, the party was leading in Baisi in the morning. The party chief Asaduddin Owaisi is yet to comment about the imminent, albeit humiliating defeat. It has received little over 60 thousand votes so far in six seats.
Many feared that AIMIM may massively polarise the votes thus benefiting BJP.
( This article was first published in The Hindu on November 8, 2015 )