Almost 10% population of Gujarat from a community remains without any ministerial representation in the government. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has been ruling Gujarat since 1998 and since then it hasn’t had a Muslim minister.
Muslims account for roughly 11 per cent and have a sizeable presence in around 25 Assembly seats.
For the upcoming polls, the Congress has six Muslims among the 140 candidates it has nominated so far and there isn’t a single one among the BJP’s 166.
There is sharp fall in Muslim representation in Gujarat Assembly as compared to 1980 when Muslim representation in the Gujarat Assembly stood at 10 percent, which was equivalent to the size of the minority community.
In 1980, a dozen Muslim candidates won and entered the legislative Assembly. Three Rajya Sabha MPs from Gujarat were from also the Muslim community. Analysts say that it happened because former chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki successfully introduced his KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Ahmed Adivasi, Muslim) electoral arithmetic.