On 9 June, Narendra Modi took oath as the Prime Minister of India. Apart from him, 71 members of the Union Cabinet were sworn in, the largest ever by the National Democratic Alliance government. However, not a single Muslim Member of Parliament (MP) was sworn into the Union Cabinet this time.
Political experts and opposition parties say that the declining political participation of Muslims in the country is alarming, as their elected representatives work for the good of all, regardless of their background. A total of 24 Muslim MPs have been elected in the eighteenth Lok Sabha elections, and 21 of them are from allied parties in the Opposition coalition. The opposition parties and political analysts have criticized the decline in Muslim representation in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On May 3, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said that the experience of political representation of Muslims in recent years has not been so good. For the first time in the country, there is no Muslim MP in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. After this, he said that in the previous Congress government, various sections of the country’s population were given representation. It is also being claimed that the BJP did not want to give tickets to Muslim candidates in 2022. He stated the party’s stand on the issue of not giving a ticket to any Muslim candidate is that the ticket is given looking at the ability of the candidate to win the election.
Four crore Muslims live in various State Assembly constituencies of Uttar Pradesh and account for 19 per cent of the state’s total population. The number of Muslim candidates getting BJP tickets has decreased steadily and reached zero. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had given tickets to seven Muslim candidates. In 2019, the BJP gave tickets to six Muslims, but in 2014 and 2019, not a single Muslim candidate of BJP could win the election.
In the BJP’s first two terms, a Muslim was made the Union Minister of Minority Affairs, while Kiren Rijiju, a Buddhist, was made the Union Minister for Minority Affairs. Now, along with Kiren Rijiju, George Kurien has been given the charge of Minister of State as a junior minister in his department. George Kurien is a Christian.
In 2014 Dr. Najma Heptulla was made the Union Minister of Minority Affairs. Former Rajya Sabha MP Najma Heptulla is currently the Governor of Manipur. In 2019, Modi gave the party’s Rajya Sabha MP Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi the charge of Minority Affairs, though he resigned from his post in 2022. He was succeeded by Smriti Irani, who was given the additional charge of Minority Affairs. Hence, there is not a single Muslim minister in the BJP government since 2022, or a single Muslim MP in any House of Parliament, ahead of the 2024 elections.
Apart from this, BJP has more than a thousand MLAs in various Assemblies across the country. According to the 2011 census, the number of Muslims in India is 17.22 crore. Their participation in the total population is 14.2 percent. In comparison, among the Opposition alliance’s MPs, 12 per cent each are from upper and middle castes, about 30 per cent from other backward classes, about 17 per cent from scheduled castes and about 10 per cent from scheduled tribes. Although the BJP has not given tickets to Muslims in the Lok Sabha or Assembly elections, it has tried to reach out to the Pasmanda Muslim community who are considered as ‘backward’ Muslims. It is believed that they constitute the majority of the total Muslim population in India.
In 2023, 15,000 seats were polled in the UP civic elections, in which 395 Muslims were given tickets. Pasmanda Muslims were part of the candidates who got BJP tickets. From BJP’s point of view, this number was considered big. Two years ago, the BJP gave tickets to four Pasmanda Muslims in Delhi’s local body elections, says political analyst Asim Ali. BJP thought it was right to give tickets to Pasmanda Muslims in the elections of local bodies. Because these elections are fought on local issues and are supported by the local administration. In Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, party ideology is more important, which is why the BJP does not give tickets to Muslim candidates and Muslim voters also do not vote for the BJP.