Members of civil society groups have urged the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) to field a serious contender, days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revoked legislator from Goshamahal T. Raja Singh’s suspension and nominated him as the party’s candidate from the same Assembly constituency.
Civil society members said that it was important to uphold the secular fabric of the city and to put an end to hate speeches. They pointed out that the BRS should not tolerate either Mr. Singh’s objectionable utterances against Prophet Muhammad, which led to the BJP leader’s arrest under the Preventive Detention Act, or for that matter, nor any form of hate speech.
Amoomat Society founder Khalida Parveen appealed to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, and ministers K T Rama Rao and T Harish Rao to field a “strong candidate” from the constituency. “Raja Singh has been making communally charged comments frequently. The BRS leaders have always said that Telangana has been secular and that they would strive to always keep it secular. We would like to tell them to walk the talk by announcing a strong candidate from Goshamahal,” she said.
Ms Parveen, who is also a philanthropist, has been a vocal critic of communal forces and was also the victim of the Bulli Bai case, which saw anti-social elements posting photos of women accompanied by derogatory messages, said that it would be the responsibility of people like her to make the BRS candidate win.
S Q Masood, an office-bearer of ASEEM, an advocacy group, said that BRS should disprove the notion held among a section of society that the party has an understanding with the BJP. “It would be a good opportunity for BRS and KTR to defeat a communal person contesting from the Goshamahal constituency. There have been attempts to vitiate the communal amity of Hyderabad, and this should be stopped,” he said.
