From being briefly charged in 1993 blasts, Azmi has come a long way, reinventing himself as the voice of Muslims, North Indian migrants. The Assembly scrap comes after a long conflict between him and the MNS

It was a face-off that was waiting to happen. When Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA Abu Asim Azmi was roughed up and slapped by his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) counterparts inside the state Assembly on Monday, the ugly incident was in a sense a denouement to a nearly two-year conflict building up between the two sides.

The seeds of the flashpoint were sown in early 2008 when 54-year-old Azmi promised to distribute lathis or sticks to migrants in Mumbai to protect themselves. MNS chief Raj Thackeray retaliated to this by threatening to distribute swords among his supporters. That war of words saw MNS supporters attacking migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Thackeray upping the ante on his sons-of-the-soil campaign.

Azmi has since remained in the headlines, building his constituency among North Indian migrants in the financial capital. It did not help him in the Lok Sabha polls though and he was defeated in the Mumbai North-West constituency, his second successive defeat after losing from Bhiwandi in 2004. Azmi, however, came up trumps in the recent Assembly polls, and contested and won from two seats — Mankhurd-Shivajinagar in Mumbai’s eastern suburbs and Bhiwandi East.

While Azmi was among of the richest candidates in the country, contesting the Lok Sabha polls with declared assets of Rs 122 crore, his aides and supporters say he belongs to a “middle-class family” and is a “self-made man”, a rags-to-riches story.

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