24New Delhi

Sajda Ahmed of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Iqra Munawwar Hasan Chaudhary of the Samajwadi Party are among the 24 Muslim members who have been elected to the 18th Lok Sabha in the just concluded election. The entry of 24 Muslims in the Lok Sabha is seen as a positive move towards the participation of India’s second-largest religious community in Parliamentary democracy.

While the 27-year-old year Iqra is a law graduate who won from the Kairana constituency in Western Uttar Pradesh on the ticket of the Samajwadi party Sajda Ahmed is a veteran leader who has won for Lok Sabha election a third time.

Sajda Ahmed has been re-elected from the Uluberia constituency where she secured 694,945 votes and defeated her nearest rival of the BJP Arun Uday Pal Chaudhary.

Iqra, a debutant defeated her nearest rival BJP's Pradeep Kumar by 69,116 votes in a closely contested election.

Iqra, an alumnus of the Lady Sri Ram College of New Delhi - she also graduated in law from the UK - hails from a political family of Shamli.

The number of Muslims elected to Lok Sabha doesn’t look as low as was feared by the Community. Muslims have been complaining about their diminishing presence in India's political spectrum.

However, this time political parties had fielded only 78 candidates from the Muslim community as against 115 in the 2019 election.

The most well-known Muslim who successfully contested elections is cricketer Yusuf Pathan. He not only won his maiden political battle as the candidate of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) from the Baharampur constituency of West Bengal, he also turned out to be a giant killer as he defeated Congress veteran Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary.

Muslim leaders like the two former Chief Ministers of Jammu and Kashmir - Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah – were defeated in their respective constituencies. Omar was defeated by an independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh who is known by his nickname of Engineer Rashid, whose campaign was run in absentia by his two sons.

Engineer Rashid, whose real name is Abdul Rashid Sheikh won the Baramulla seat by securing 4.7 lakh votes against his main rival Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister and vice-president of the National Conference. He too is a giant killer in this election.

Interestingly, Engineer Rashid’s campaign was carried on by his two sons as he has been in Delhi’s Tihar Jail for five years facing trial for his alleged involvement in supporting terrorists in Kashmir.

In Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag-Rajouri seat, National Conference's Mian Altaf Ahmed defeated Mehbooba Mufti by 2,81,794 votes, and in the Srinagar constituency, NC candidate Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehndi got 3,56,866 votes against PDP’s Wahid Para.

From Ladakh, Independent candidate Mohammad Hanifa won by a margin of 27,862 votes.

In Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party's Maulana Mohibullah fought the election for the first time and he won on the ticket of the Samajwadi Party from the Rampur seat by securing 4,81,503 votes.

Ziaur Rahman of the Samajwadi Party from Uttar Pradesh has been elected from the Sambhal constituency.

Afzal Ansari has won from the Ghazipur on the ticket of the Samajwadi party. He is the brother of the gangster Mukhtar Ansari who died while serving a sentence for murder in the jail.

Imran Masood of Congress won against his BJP rival Raghav Lakhanpal from Saharanpur.

From Hyderabad (Telangana) Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen(AIMIM) won against BJP’s K. Madhavi Latha. He has won the Lok Sabha election for the fifth time.

In the 16th Lok Sabha, there were only 22 Muslim Members while the highest number of Muslims elected to the lower house - 49 – was in 1980 and most of them were from Congress. In the last General election 115 Muslim contested while only 22 won.

As against this, in the 2024 elections, only 78 Muslim candidates were fielded and 24 of them won.

West Bengal has elected the highest number of Muslim MPs in the just concluded elections. They are: Khalilur Rahaman,  Jangipur, Yusuf Pathan,  Baharampur, Abu Taher Khan, Murshidabad, S K Nurul, (Basirhat), Sajda Ahmed, (Uluberia), Isha Khan Choudhary, (Maldaha Dakshin).

Bihar: Muhammad Javed Kishanganj and Tariq Anwar Katihar (Congress)

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Assam: Raqib Hussain Dhubri

Kerala: Shafi Parambil (Vadakara), ET Muhammad Basheer (Malappuram) and Dr. MP Abdul Samad Samdani (Ponnani)

Lakshdeep: Muhammad Hamdullah Saeed

Tamil Nadu: Nivas Kinis Ramanathapuram