All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday said that campaigns for the civic body elections in Hyderabad made it seem like this was a contest for the prime minister’s post, reported the Hindustan Times. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections will be held in the city on December 1.
“It doesn’t look like a Hyderabad election, it’s as if we’re electing a Prime Minister in place of Narendra Modi,” Owaisi said. “I was at a rally in Karwan and said that everyone has been called here, a child said they should have called Trump [United States President Donald Trump] too. He was right, only Trump is left,”
The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, and the AIMIM have been campaigning for the elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. The BJP has roped in heavyweights, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, and the party’s National President JP Nadda.
During a roadshow in Hyderabad on Saturday, Adityanath told a crowd of supporters that Hyderabad could be renamed like cities in Uttar Pradesh. “...I told them that we renamed Faizabad as Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj after BJP came into power in UP. Then why Hyderabad can’t be renamed as Bhagyanagar?” he said. Adityanath had made a similar pitch in 2018, ahead of the Assembly elections in Telangana.
To this, without taking any names, Owaisi on Saturday said: “Your entire generation will end but Hyderabad’s name will remain”, according to ANI. He also appealed to voters to give their support to AIMIM if they did not want the city to be renamed.
Nadda had on Friday predicted his party’s victory in the election and claimed that it will be the beginning of the end of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
Last week, BJP’s Tejasvi Surya had attacked Owaisi, accusing him of speaking Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s language of “rabid Islamism, separatism, and extremism”. Surya also accused AIMIM of “allowing only Rohingya Muslims, not development” in Hyderabad. Hours later on Monday, reacting to the BJP leader’s remarks, Owaisi said the party’s aim was to create hatred.
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