Bihar Election 2025: Will Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM join Opposition's INDIA bloc?

Bihar Election 2025: Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is looking to join the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan in Bihar for the upcoming Assembly elections.

The Congress and the left parties are part of the Mahagathbandhan or the grand alliance, apart from the RJD led by Lalu Prasad Yadav. The AIMIM leaders in Bihar have been in touch with the RJD leaders, according to a report in The Indian Express. 

The Mahagathbandhan in Bihar is part of INDIA bloc alliance – an amalgamation of opposition parties forged against BJP-led National Democratic Alliance ahead of 2024 general elections. 

“We are interested in having an alliance with the Mahagathbandhan. We are very positive about forging it. Our ideology is to defeat the BJP and empower Bihar. Our fight with the BJP is the same as Congress's fight. We want the grand alliance to take AIMIM on board,” AIMIM national spokesperson Adil Hasan told The Indian Express.

‘BJP’s B team’

The Hyderabad MP’s party has so far maintained a distance from the Opposition INDIA bloc. In fact, the Mahagathbandhan parties used to call AIMIM as “BJP’s B team”, alleging that it was playing the role of “votekatwa (vote-cutter)” for the grand alliance. Owaisi has rejected these allegations as baseless.

In the 2020 assembly polls, when AIMIM was part of a “third front with the BSP and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), it won five of the 20 seats it contested and bagged 14.28 per cent of the votes polled in the 20 seats. All five seats won by AIMIM were in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region in east Bihar. Two years later, four of these five AIMIM MLAs, however, defected to the RJD.

For now, AIMIM plans to contest over 50 Assembly seats out of 243 in the upcoming Bihar polls. However, the Indian Express report, quoting sources, said the party is flexible and will contest fewer seats if the RJD and the Congress agree to accommodate it.

“AIMIM has performed well in the past polls. And we have already supported the Opposition alliance on a number of occasions – in the Speaker’s election and on Bills brought by the NDA government,” Hasan said.

There has not been any formal discussion of the AIMIM leaders with the RJD and Congress leaders for the alliance so far.

Besides the five seats which it had won in 2020, the party would like to contest from several seats across the regions of Mithilanchal, Champaran, Shahabad, Magadh and Bhagalpur, where it claims to have developed its organisation in the last five years.

In his recent visit to Bihar, the AIMIM chief attacked the ruling BJP, the JD(U) and the RJD.

Owaisi reached Bahrain on Saturday as part of a multi-nation visit by a delegation of Indian parliamentarians, seeking to engage foreign governments on India’s stance against terrorism post Operation Sindoor.