Asaduddin Owaisi faces setback as Aseem Waqaar joins Congress

Aseem Waqaar's decision to join Congress is a major blow to Owaisi ahead of the elections.

AIMIM's national spokesperson Aseem Waqaar has joined the Congress party in the presence of Uttar Pradesh Congress President Ajay Rai in Lucknow. There had been prior discussions in political circles that AIMIM's Asaduddin Owaisi was likely to face a setback before the Uttar Pradesh elections. It is now confirmed that Aseem Waqaar has joined the Congress party. The Congress Minority Cell President and Rajya Sabha MP Imran Pratapgarhi played a significant role in bringing Aseem Waqaar into the Congress.

The politically significant Uttar Pradesh is set to hold elections in 2027. In this context, Owaisi was being seen as a party that could split votes in Uttar Pradesh, and there were expectations of AIMIM winning seats in the state, which has now been undermined by Waqaar's joining Congress. Aseem Waqaar's decision to join Congress has dealt a major blow to Owaisi. Waqaar's joining Congress could impact the Muslim vote bank, as he had been with the AIMIM party for nearly a decade but has now changed his stance and joined Congress.

Aseem Waqaar had made a name for himself in Uttar Pradesh politics as the spokesperson for the AIMIM party. It is likely that leaving the party will affect AIMIM's seat prospects in Uttar Pradesh. According to reports, Aseem Waqaar was unhappy with AIMIM's decisions related to Uttar Pradesh. Before joining Owaisi's party, Waqaar had been associated with the Samajwadi Party for 20 years.

The Congress and Samajwadi Party are in an alliance in Uttar Pradesh, but formal discussions regarding seat-sharing between the two parties have not yet begun. It will be interesting to see which party has a stronger claim to the seats in Uttar Pradesh.

Now, criticizing AIMIM, Aseem Waqaar has said,

“Although the top leadership may appear to oppose the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in reality, its struggle was against Congress and other opposition parties.”

Waqaar further states

“The objective of all those who love the country in India is to remove the BJP from power and establish a secular government. However, when I was in AIMIM, although it seemed from the top leadership that we were fighting the BJP, the ground reality was quite different; the actual fight was against Congress and the opposition.”

The aim of the Congress and Samajwadi Party's alliance in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly is to ensure victory in the elections again in 2027 and to restore their influence in Uttar Pradesh. In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Congress won 2 out of 399 seats, while AIMIM failed to win even a single seat. Now it remains to be seen how much difference Aseem Waqaar's joining Congress will make in the results, as the BJP is also putting in significant effort to win the elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Now that the Samajwadi Party and Congress are part of the India Block, it will be interesting to see how effective this decision will be, as the results of the upcoming elections will reveal..

Waqaar has stated that

after disagreeing with AIMIM's decisions, he decided to join Congress. Waqaar mentioned the leader Humayun Kabir from Bengal, whom he accused of being a BJP agent, citing a sting operation that alleged that Kabir received ₹1,100 crore. Waqaar said, "After the Congress government comes to power at the Centre, we will investigate who gave this money and where it went."

Currently, after the circulating news, it is clear that Aseem Waqaar has now joined Congress from AIMIM. It remains to be seen how detrimental this decision will be for AIMIM and Owaisi in the Uttar Pradesh elections, as the impact will be revealed in next year's Assembly elections.