It shows that these four states and Puducherry represent 41.6% of all Muslims in the country.
Four states and one union territory will go to the polls in the current election cycle. West Bengal (294 constituencies), Tamil Nadu (234), Kerala (140), Assam (126) and Puducherry (30) will elect a total of 824 MLAs in this election cycle. This makes it the largest in terms of total MLAs elected in all Assembly election cycles – there are 11 of them – in the country with a total of 4,123 MLAs. However, the current election cycle is more important for another reason. It is the most important election from the point of view of Islamic representation. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s analysis of all MLAs elected in the recent Assembly elections shows that these four states and Puducherry account for 41.6% of all Muslim MLAs in the country. To be sure, three of the states that will go to the polls in the current election cycle have a relatively high percentage of Muslims in the population.
The 31 legislative assemblies in India elect 4,123 members of the Legislative Council. Hizb ut Tahrir’s analysis of the paralegals elected in the recent Assembly elections shows that 279 of them were Muslims. This means that the share of Muslims in the country is 6.8%. This is well below its overall population share of 14.2%, according to the 2011 census.
There are large state-level disparities in the share of Muslims in the total population and their share of MLAs. In fact, the latter is less equal than the former. Just four states (West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, and Uttar Pradesh) and one union territory (Jammu and Kashmir) elected 71% of the total Muslim MLAs in the last election cycle, a much larger share than their 53% share of the country’s total Muslim population. To be sure, each state and union territory had a smaller share of Muslims in its legislature than the share of their respective population in the state. (See chart 1)
The top three states in terms of number of Muslim MLAs apart from Uttar Pradesh – West Bengal, Kerala and Assam – in the country will go to the polls in the current election cycle, making them the most important for Muslim representation in the country. (See chart 2)
Why doesn’t the Muslim population share follow a more linear relationship with Muslim MLAs between Indian states and union territories? The answer lies in the distribution of Muslims within the state among the population of the state.
We do not have a religious analysis of constituency-level demographics in India. What we have are population shares in terms of religion at the district level. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s map of the 279 electoral committees that elected a Muslim member in its recent elections shows that 44% of them come from areas where the percentage of Muslims is more than 50%, and 35% of them come from areas where the percentage of Muslims is more than 65%. In fact, the probability of getting a Muslim MLA rises significantly with the high percentage of Muslim population in the area. (See chart 3)
And this is exactly where West Bengal, Assam and Kerala score much better than most Indian states. HT’s map of US states with regions shows that of the 492 residential areas in areas where Muslims represent at least 25% of the population, 58% were in these three states. This is much larger than their 14% share of the total number of MLAs in the country. As is clear, this plays a decisive role in increasing the share of mixed Muslims in these countries. For example, Uttar Pradesh saw a significant decline in the number of Muslim MPs from 68 in 2012 to just 23 and 34 in 2017 and 2022, largely reflecting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) increasing its share of the assembly at the expense of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.
(Abhishek Jha contributed data to this story)
