New Delhi: On Saturday (February 8), the BJP, which had been out of power in the national capital for 27 years, won the Delhi assembly election.
The BJP secured a comfortable majority with 48 seats, while the previously two-time ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) managed only 22 wins.
While it has been observed that a number of AAP heavyweights lost their seats, the party’s candidates did fairly well in Muslim-majority seats and grabbed six seats where Muslims are make up a sizable share of the population.
The Wire spoke with Muslim voters in Delhi to understand what led them to vote and for whom.
Some saw AAP as safest bet; Congress campaign as ‘invisible’
Beginning with Ballimaran, Muslim voters expressed a loyalty towards the AAP, and although some explicitly claimed that the party had mostly kept mum on anti-Muslim incidents, they still believed it was a safer bet over the BJP.
This has seemingly come through in their voting pattern – with sitting AAP MLA Imran Hussain winning the seat, defeating former long-time Congress MLA Haroon Yusuf and Kamal Bagri, a sitting municipal councillor of the BJP.
In Okhla, where several Muslim candidates competed to claim control over a mixed-population seat, locals shared that the Congress was invisible in the area.
Mohammed Saddam, a shop owner in Okhla, felt that while the Congress would also be a good option for Muslims as opposed to the BJP, he was confused looking at the poor visibility of its campaigns in the area.
“They hardly visited us here. Things could have been different, votes could have swayed their way,” Saddam said.
Though Okhla re-seated AAP heavyweight Amanatullah Khan, over 39,000 people (around 19% of the vote in the seat) voted for the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)’s Shifa Ur Rehman, the 48-year-old human rights activist who was arrested by the Delhi police, which accused him of mobilising Muslims to protest the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) as well as of ‘masterminding’ the 2020 Delhi riots.
Moving towards Delhi’s cluster of Muslim ghettos, Shaheen Bagh relived its past glory during the campaigning by various parties – Muslims coming together and engaging in debate, speeches and contemplation about their future as the largest religious minority in India.
Concerns and questions around freedom, rights and identity resonate with Shaheen Bagh because of its connection with the anti-CAA and -NRC movement, which led to several students and activists being jailed – some of whom remain jailed since 2020.
When Delhi voted on February 5, the city’s Muslims faced many choices, but many said they shared a common motive: to prevent the targeting of innocent members of the community.
“We know why our sons were being jailed, we know why Jamia Millia [Islamia] was flooded with police. If they think Muslims are the problem, then we must elect responsible Muslim leaders to power,” Huda Nazir, a student in the constituency, told The Wire.
In 2024, the number of communal riots in India rose by 84%, according to a report by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. It said that as many as 59 riots were reported last year, as opposed to 32 in 2023.
Even the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has noted that the Modi government could expose millions of Muslims to detention, deportation and statelessness when the government completes its planned nationwide NRC.
‘It seems as if they won by burning our homes’
The CAA, the NRC and the 2020 Delhi riots have left indelible impressions on Muslim voters.
Though there is a widely prevalent sentiment that the AAP sidelined the Muslim community’s concerns regarding these three things, many still supported Muslim leaders from the party, hoping for a safer future as they find themselves in an increasingly communal India.
“People think that Muslims don’t vote or aren’t informed enough to vote, but we want to send a message to parties that we cannot be ignored, that our votes matter,” said a campaigner for Tahir Hussain, an ex-AAP MLA who was also an accused in the ‘Delhi riots conspiracy’ case.
According to Election Commission data, the top five assembly constituencies in terms of voter turnout include four in the northeast Delhi district, close to 30% of whose population is Muslim as per the 2011 census.
Mustafabad registered the highest turnout trend at 69% and Seelampur came next at 68.7%, as reported by The Hindu.
These are followed by the reserved constituency of Gokalpur, which saw a turnout trend of 68.3%, followed by Babarpur at 65.9%.
In these elections, campaigning by Muslim candidates was more visible as parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and AIMIM gave them space.
Also read | In Numbers: The Significant Shift in Voter Behaviour in the Delhi 2025 Polls
In its attempt to retain Muslim voters, the AAP had fielded Muslim candidates in the same five seats as 2020 – Okhla, Ballimaran, Matia Mahal, Mustafabad and Seelampur.
The AAP won in all these seats except Mustafabad, where the BJP’s Mohan Singh Bisht won, defeating the AAP’s well-known Adeel Khan and the AIMIM’s new pick Tahir Hussain.
Muslims in Mustafabad told The Wire that the AAP had disappointed them and voters were swaying between the AAP and the AIMIM in a battle between loyalty and practicality.
In 2020, voters elected the AAP’s Haji Yunus, who had won by a margin of 20,704 votes.
Many Muslims in Seelampur, however, remained loyal towards the AAP, which appeared to lead to a victory for Chaudhary Zubair Ahmad.
The Muslim citizenry in the state appear to have voted differently – some stuck with the AAP, some moved to the Congress and some gave the AIMIM a chance, as per conversations with them.
But what shakes their confidence is how those directly involved in inflammatory speeches against Muslims, such as Kapil Mishra and Parvesh Verma, won by huge margins.
“It seems as if they won by burning our homes, by jailing our children. It is disturbing that the majority community voted for people who want to make Muslims invisible,” a dejected supporter of the Congress said.
