It was a major victory to Congress leader Arif Aqueel from the Bhopal North constituency for the sixth time.

He defeated his nearest rival, 34-year-old BJP’s Fatima Siddiqui by whopping 34,535 votes. With this victory, Aqeel has made a record of highest vote margin against his rival.

For the past two terms, Aqueel has been the only Muslim representation in the State assembly.

It was expected that since the BJP has fielded a woman Muslim candidate, she would get minority and women vote, but the results proved that Bhopal North constituency is strong bastion of Aqeel.

Aqueel was polled 89,902 votes against BJP nominee Fatima Siddiqui who got 55,367 votes. In the previous elections, Aqueel’s margin of victory was around 5,000 votes only.

While talking to media persons after receiving his victory certificate, Aqeel said it was the victory of his party and the supporters.

In this particular constituency, there was a rise of around 2 per cent in the polling in comparison to previous election.

 This rise in votes helped Aqeel because the electorates did not like a new candidate without a track record.

The BJP had fielded Fatima Siddiqui, daughter of senior Congress leader and former minister Rasool Ahmed Siddiqui, only a day before the last day of the nominations.

The gathering of Muslim women during the campaigning trail of Fatima was being witnessed.

In the procession on Monday taken out by her in the old city markets also attracted a number of Muslim folks.

However, the crowd did not convert into success to Fatima.