All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen Party President Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday night criticised Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath for saying the Hyderabad MP will be forced to flee Telangana if the Bharatiya Janata Party comes to power, and urged him to uphold the dignity of his office, IANS reported. Telangana goes to the polls on December 7, and the results are expected on December 11.

“If BJP forms government in Telangana, I can tell you that Owaisi will have to run away just like Nizam was compelled to run away from Hyderabad,” Adityanath had said at an election rally in Telangana’s Tandur town earlier in the day. “BJP will give security to all but will not allow those who spread anarchy.” He added that Owaisi and his party indulged primarily in “appeasement politics”.

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The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen Party chief claimed that the Uttar Pradesh leader had his facts wrong. “Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan did not flee Hyderabad,” IANS quoted Owaisi as saying at an election rally in Malakpet. “He was made ‘Raj Pramukh’ and when there was war with China, he offered his gold to India.”

Owaisi said he is not scared by such “threats and propaganda”. “If we criticise the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Adityanath, will we be chased out of the country?” Owaisi said. “It is my religious belief that Prophet Adam, when he descended on the Earth from Paradise, he came to India. Thus India is my father’s country and nobody can force me [to] flee.”

The Hyderabad MP suggested that Adityanath instead focus on taking care of his constituency of Gorakhpur where, he claimed, “150 children die of encephalitis every year”.

Although Owaisi’s party has not entered a formal alliance with caretaker chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the two leaders have spoken in support of each other.