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Not Vote Jihad, Here’s Why BJP Lost Dhule-Malegaon LS Seat in 2024

Six months on, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is still unable to digest the defeat it faced from the Dhule-Malegaon Lok Sabha Seat in the 2024 General Elections. Here is why the BJP lost

Wednesday February 5, 2025 5:21 PM, Aleem Faizee

[The Masjid and Mandir standing side by side are testimony to the harmony with which the Hindus and Muslims are living in Malegaon, but the BJP is trying to disturb this for political mileage. (ummid.com Photo)]

Malegaon: Six months on, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is still unable to digest the defeat it faced from the Dhule-Malegaon Lok Sabha Seat in the 2024 General Elections.

The Dhule Lok Sabha seat comprises of six assembly constituencies – Dhule City, Dhule Rural, Malegaon Central, Malegaon Outer, Sindkheda, and Baglan.

Dhule and Malegaon were actually two reserved and different Parliamentary Constituencies till 2009 when they were unreserved and merged into one, Dhule Lok Sabha Constituency, after delimitation exercise. The seat has been a Congress bastion but since 2009, the BJP has won from here.

In 2024 elections, however, Dr Subhash Bhamre of the BJP – Former Union Minister and two time MP, was defeated by Dr. Shobhatai Bachhav of the Congress Party by over 7,900 votes in a neck-and-neck battle.

Bachhav bagged a total of 579,172 votes whereas Bhamre got 571,381 votes. Constituency wise, the Congress candidate got 72,242 votes in Malegaon Outer, 88,438 votes in Dhule City, 75,923 votes in Dhule Rural, 68,424 votes in Sindkheda, 78,253 votes in Baglan (Satana) and 198,869 votes in Malegaon Central.

Smear campaign against Malegaon

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) believes it lost the Dhule LS seat because of the 198,869 votes that Bachchav got in Malegaon Central Assembly Constituency.

The Malegaon Central Assembly seat is dominated by Muslims. Ever since its loss in the 2024 LS Elections, the BJP politicians, sadly including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, are accusing the Muslims of Malegaon Central Assembly Seat of indulging in “Vote Jihad”.

The term “Jihad” is one of the BJP’s favourite themes to polarise voters and instil fears among its Hindu vote bank. “Love Jihad”, “UPSC Jihad”, “Land Jihad”, “Vote Jihad”…. there is a long list of such curse terms that the BJP leaders use as and when the situation warrants.

So, instead of humbly respecting the people’s verdict, as it advises others, the BJP brought out “Vote Jihad” from its dictionary of curse words to demonise the Malegaon Central Assembly Constituency and vilify the people of Malegaon, simultaneously instilling fear among its Hindu voters.

Two BJP politicians emerged prominent among the BJP rank who led the smear campaign against Malegaon and its people ever since its loss in the 2024 elections from Dhule-Malegaon. One is the BJP politician and now MLA from Kankavli Vidhan Sabha constituency in Sindhudurg district who is infamous for regularly spitting venom against Muslims.

The other is a disgraced BJP man who was recently spotted in a purported video showing him with a woman in an uncompressing situation and is infamous for levelling unfounded allegations against BJP rivals to get limelight in the media and thus trying his stature in his party raised.

But surprising is the repeated utterances of the “Vote Jihad” slang by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis against the Malegaonians. As Chief Minister, who also holds Home Ministry, Fadnavis is expected to behave more responsibly and sincerely. But, fully ignoring his constitutional position, he joined the smear campaign against Malegaon and its people and used the slang – most recently in Shirdi, and even worse also in the Maharashtra Assembly during its very first session after the 2024 state elections.

The Kankavli MLA went in silent mode after he was successful in pleasing his masters and getting a ministerial berth. Fadnavis too is now silent, at least in public, on the unsubstantiated allegations against the Malegaonians.

But, the disgraced BJP politician, who hardly had any locus standi in his own party especially since the emergence of the alleged sex clips, made the smear campaign against the Muslim dominated city his sole and only agenda.

[The 18th century historic fort is witness to the contribution of the Malegaonians in India’s Freedom Struggle. (ummid.com photo)]

In the last two months, this disgraced BJP man has travelled to Malegaon from Mumbai at least 6 times. As if the slang “Vote Jihad” coined by his bosses was insufficient, he topped it up with another pet phrase of the BJP – “illegal Bangladeshi Rohingyas”, fully ignoring the fact that Bangladesh has of late changed a lot and no Bangladeshi would, legally or illegally, now want to migrate to and live in India.

For this BJP henchman, however, the people of Malegaon hands in glove with local officials are getting birth certificates issued for “thousands of Bangladeshi Rohingyas” (repeatedly used by him without comma) submitting fake documents. His “efforts paid off”, and the man who did not have any taker suddenly found backers with the state forming a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the allegations.

Following the SIT probe, two officials at the local Revenue Department were suspended and three residents – one male and two females, were taken into custody for getting birth certificate issued allegedly using “fake” documents.

The SIT however has so far not traced any “Bangladeshi Rohingya” illegally residing and “aiding Vote Jihad” in Malegaon. The BJP henchmen however continues to blame the non-existent lot for the party’s defeat in Dhule.

Bhamre's arrogance cost BJP Dhule-Malegan LS Seat

The fact of the matter is that Subhash Bhamre’s loss in the 2024 Parliament election is the result of his arrogance. Bhamre was a political novice till 2014 when he won the Parliamentary Elections for the first time riding on the “Modi Wave”. In 2019, Pulwama helped him to retain the seat as it did to other BJP candidates on dozens of seats.

Subhash Bhamre’s ten years as MP has been a case of non-performance and does not have anything significant to showcase. To make his case more problematic for his political career, he always displayed some kind of enmity towards Malegaon Central Assembly Constituency, and rarely showed any concern about the issues faced by the local residents as if the Muslim dominated Assembly seat is not part of the Dhule Parliamentary Constituency he was representing.

It is common for a candidate to reach out to every section and part of his or her constituency to seek votes during election time. But, Bhamre, neck-deep in arrogance, didn’t bothered to do even this. In the run up to the 2014 Parliamentary elections, he had addressed only one rally in Malegaon Central area. In 2019, he did not even address one.

After winning the seat for a second consecutive term, Bhamre became so arrogant that he publicly and multiple times on different platforms, said he did not need the votes of the people of Malegaon Central Assembly Constituency. Against this backdrop, why he and his party are upset after the result?

Bhamre’s role during COVD 19

Subhash Bhamre says he is a doctor and medical practitioner by profession. This adds to his responsibilities as MP, especially when there is a health emergency. However, his role during the COVID-19 Pandemic was shameful and disgusting as far as Malegaon Central Assembly Constituency is concerned.

The Muslim dominated constituency was among the areas hit by the pandemic during its early days. The City reported outbreak of the Pandemic on April 09, 2020 when five patients were found Covid positive. Soon, almost entire Muslim dominated constituency was in the grip of the Pandemic. The impact of the Pandemic in Malegaon was so intense that the City was reporting 1 death every 20 minute. The healthcare system had crashed, the funeral kits ran short and the Malegaonians were running from pillar to post for help.

This was the time when the people of Malegaon needed their MP the most, who incidentally was also a doctor. He however not only kept him away from the constituency during these testing times but was also at the forefront in blocking the patients from the Malegaon Central region access to the hospitals operating in the Hindu dominated Malegaon Outer area.

There were open calls for the boycott and blockade of Muslims of Malegaon Central. But instead of stopping such attempts he remained silent. Much to the shock of the local residents, he rubbed salt on their wounds by asking the government to deploy Army in the City and handover it to military to enforce Covid lockdown.

Bhamre lost support in other constituencies too

Coupled with his arrogance, Bhamre’s incompetency and lacklustre 10 years as MP too played a role in his defeat in the 2024 General Elections. Bhamre was two-term MP when he entered the 2024 Poll Battle. During his first term as MP, he was also MoS Defence and a member of PM Modi’s inner circle. He would have transformed the constituency had he wished to do so. But he didn’t. The result was that his vote percentage dropped in other assembly constituencies as well.

In a tit for tat response to “Vote Jihad” slang against the Malegaonians, the newly elected MP Shobha Bachhav said that the BJP and Bhamre are trying to hide their failure by running the canard and smear campaign against Malegaon and its people, as usual, using a fake narrative.

“The data shows that people rejected Bhamre and voted for me in a large number not only in Malegaon Central, but in other five assembly constituencies too”, she said.

Also Read: Dhule-Malegaon Lok Sabha Polls 2024: Onus on Hindu Voters to Defeat BJP

Showing the Election Commission of India data, Shobha Bachhav said in Baglan she got 50,000 more votes than the Congress candidate got in 2019. Similarly, she got 32,000 more votes in Dhule City and around 60,000 more votes in Dhule Rural assembly seats as compared to the votes secured by the Congress candidate in 2019.

As of Malegaon Central, she said, the constituency has voted against the BJP candidates in every election, and the party could not get more than 6,000 votes in the last four parliamentary elections.

“Against this backdrop, the allegations of “Vote Jihad” is simply a divertive tactic to hide their failure and spread hatred among the communities”, she said.

[Dr Shobhatai Bachhav and Subhash Bhamre]

On the issue of Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators, Bachhav said Malegaon will never allow such people to stay in the City. Nonetheless, she said, the administration is at liberty to take the necessary action if it finds any foreigner illegally living in the City.

Dhule MP Dr Shobhatai Bachhav also accused the BJP of exerting undue and unnecessary pressure on the local administration on the matter.

The BJP’s open support to Hindutva terrorists involved in the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon blasts, and making one of the key accused, Pragya Thakur, a Member of Parliament are also the reasons why it will be very difficult for the BJP to find supporters in Malegaon unless it really does something really concrete for the City.

Hence the BJP will do well if it analyses the real reasons behind Bhamre’s loss instead of hiding behind the falsified smear campaign against Malegaon and its people.

Malegaon has survived a series of communal riots and two deadly terrorist attacks – all aimed at destroying the secular fabric of the City where Hindus and Muslims have been living in total harmony.

The latest smear campaign against the City is yet another attempt to disrupt the communal harmony in the City and shameful exploitation of its Muslim identity by political novices to raise their political stature, which, RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat says, has become a fashion. It must be stopped.

[The writer, Aleem Faizee, is founder Editor ummid.com. Contact him via email aleem.faizee@gmail.com.]

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