4 Of 5 AIMIM MLAs In Bihar Join RJD, Make It Largest Party In Assembly
Mumbai: Four out of the five AIMIM MLAs in Bihar joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, on Wednesday. The MLAs are Shahnawaz, Mohammad Anzar Naimi, Muhammad Izhar Asfi and Syed Ruknuddin.
“Out of the five Bihar AIMIM MLAs, four have joined our party today. We welcome them. Now we are the largest party in the Bihar Legislative Assembly,” RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav told reporters in Patna.
With the new addition, the RJD now has 79 MLAs in the 243-member assembly. Till now BJP was the single largest party in Bihar with 77 MLAs. This happened when all three Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) MLAs joined the BJP in Bihar in March this year. JD(U) has 45, Congress 19 and Left 15.
Four AIMIM MLAs were in touch with the RJD since the beginning of the month as they were apprehensive about their future after the 2021 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in which the Asaduddin Owaisi-led party had fielded its candidates on more than 90 seats but failed to win even a single constituency, IANS reported.
Interestingly, the AIMIM, influential among Muslim voters, had cut RJD’s votebank in at least 20 constituencies in the 2020 Bihar Assembly election. However, Muslims in UP did not vote for the Hyderabad-based party.
The AIMIM MLAs are apprehensive that the voters of Bihar may do the same in the 2025 Assembly elections, and hence, they want to merge with RJD well before it.
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