Marginalia, Nida-e Haq

BJP Full Steam Ahead It is close to two months now, since the election results were declared, yet the Opposition parties seem to have gone into a limbo, seemingly not recovered from the shock defeat in the elections. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which got a landslide victory in the elections, is not sitting idle but preparing for the forthcoming Assembly elections in three states—Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana—with full steam, whereas the Opposition parties in these states are yet to recover from the shock at the recent defeat and seem to be in a complete disarray. The Assembly elections are scheduled to be held around October-November this year in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana. In all these states the BJP is already in power. Soon after the results of the Lok Sabha elections, BJP national president Amit Shah held a meeting of the leaders from the three states to chalk out the strategy for the Assembly elections. While the party has a clear leader as well...

Media Ownership Monitor: Who owns the media in India?                     Asad Mirza The Media Ownership Monitor (MOM) project, a global research and advocacy effort to promote transparency and media pluralism at an international level, was initiated by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in 2015. In India, it conducted the Media Ownership Monitor project together with Delhi based digital media company, DataLEADS . The key findings of the Media Ownership Monitor and the detailed results of the study were made public at a function in New Delhi, today (29 May 2019). The key findings provide a vivid and interactive picture of the Indian media landscape by disclosing who owns and ultimately controls mass media. "India is one of the biggest media markets in the world. However, the concentration of ownership of media shows that a handful of people own and control Indian media. Our res...

How the Muslims vote in 2019. Asad Mirza The results of the 2019 elections to constitute the 19 Lok Sabha were a bit of unexpected, even for the winners and the ruling party. Even though various theories are doing the rounds of large scale rigging, change of EVMs etc. Yet, the most important point to ponder is that how many votes the ruling BJP was able to muster from the largest minority community of the country. An analysis of detailed results constituency by constituency points out the fact that Muslims across India, indeed voted for the BJP. There are 46 constituencies in the country which have more than 35% Muslim population. Of these the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won on 14 seats in 2019. While it had won in all the 12 Muslim majority constituencies of Uttar Pradesh in 2014, in 2019 it won in only five such constituencies —Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Bahraich and Bareilly. A comparative analysis of the votes polled in 2014 and in 2019 in the seve...

After 2019, what? Asad Mirza Since, early morning by when the election trends started pouring in on every TV channel and social media platform. A pall of gloom seems to have descended on every Muslim locality in the country. But the moot question to answer is, are we ourselves responsible for this? The answer to this is, both yes and no. Before the elections a lot of debate was focussed on the tactical voting by Muslims. But the trends seem to belie this. As the trends indicate, in Delhi and Bihar to some extent is some seats of UP, where they were supposed to vote tactically, at the last moment they shifted their allegiance to the Congress and as a result, BJP is leading in all these seats. The trends have also established the fact that India is going to be a, minority hating, democracy hating, anti-secular Hindu Rashtra, where one religion and one perverse ideology is going to dominate the entire nation. The election results have also brought home two stark real...

How the Indian Muslims Vote Indian Muslims India has the world’s largest Muslim minority population, it’s also the world’s third largest after Indonesia and Pakistan. India is home to 10% of the world’s Muslims. As per 2011 Census India’s Muslim population stands at 138,188,240 -13.4% of the total Indian population. The largest concentration – about 47% of all Muslims in India - live in the three states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar.   Muslims play a crucial role in election politics. Out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, Muslims make up over 30% of voters in 35 constituencies, and between 11—30% of voters in a further 183 constituencies. Before every elections the bodey of how the Muslims will vote, is raised. The main aim of this tactic is to polarise the votes and gather non-Muslim votes in favour of one candidate. The winning results of this tactic displayed in the results of 2014 elections. Emerging trends - 2019 On a pan-India level, Muslims in India u...