Elections in five provinces of India concluded on 11 March 2017, being one of the most anticipated electoral events of 2017.

What made it most interesting was that Uttar Pradesh, the state with biggest electorate in the country, went for poll as well. What looked like a triangular fight until the end turned into a one sided white wash for BJP.

The important take away from this election was the peoples will to give decisive mandate. Also, what is interesting to be noted here is that none of the incumbent govt were re-elected anywhere.

If UttaraKhand and UP saw a BJP wave, Punjab gave a thumping victory to congress which was surprise to many as AAP was expected to fare well in Punjab while Manipur and Goa have resulted in hung assemblies.

Following are the final tally from each state (Source: EC website)

In Uttar Pradesh a total of 25 Muslim candidates won as opposed to 69 in the previous assembly. Incidentally BJP had not fielded any Muslim candidate anywhere except 1 in Manipur where it fielded Md Anwar Husain from Lilong constituency but he lost the election.

After the results were announced journalists have posed this question to BJP leader that whether it was a strategic decision to not field any Muslim candidate especially in UP to which all of them have replied that tickets were distributed based on candidates winning probability.

In one such interaction with Prannoy Roy of NDTV, Prakash Javredkar (Cabinet minister, HRD) has hinted the possibility of inclusion of Muslim faces in the UP cabinet.

After the results, Mayawati has raised doubts over credibility of EVMs and BSP has officially written to EC (a copy of the letter can be found here) and at the time of writing this article EC has responded to allegation calling it legally untenable ( you can read EC’s response here).

Following is a list of Muslim candidates who won the election from each state.