Hyderabad parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday obliquely expressed his appreciation for Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao stating that he has “worked” for the State.
Mr Owaisi was speaking at what the party celebrates as -- National Integration Day -- at Hockey Ground, soon after concluding a well-attended Tiranga rally. Here, Mr Owaisi criticised the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party and referred to the CM as “maamu” and in the Dakhni idiom said that a known person is more reliable than an unknown person.
“People will say that he (Owaisi) has spoken about these two (Congress and BJP), why is he not saying anything about the third (Bharat Rashtra Samithi)? I will say about the third that naye maamu se nakte maamu achhe hai. And maamu has indeed worked. And the reason for working is also because we (AIMIM) are also there,” Mr Owaisi said, even as he sought to know from those present whether communal amity is a reality in the State, and if they are facing issues connected to electricity and power.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president remained tight lipped on who would get the party’s tickets to contest. “It has not been decided from where the Majlis will contest. Everybody is anxious about this. We will contest from wherever we have to. We will contest wholeheartedly and fearlessly. And we will win,” he said.
The AIMIM chief asserted that his party has nothing to do with razakars. “Those who were razakars went to Pakistan, and those who are wafadar (faithful) are fighting here, and despite being lynched, are not leaving,” he said.
Touching upon Operation Polo and its aftermath, Mr Owaisi faulted Home Minister Amit Shah and the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for their stand, and accused them of lying. Citing the Sunderlal Committee report, he said that for each razakar atrocity, 100 Muslims were killed, as mentioned in the report. Bodies of women were fished out from wells, he alleged.
“Today Amit Shah says that without a drop of blood being shed this was done. You are lying just like Pandit Nehru, who on September 18, 1948, in his address on the radio, lied about everything happening without a single drop of blood being spilled,” he said, and underscored that Indira Gandhi commented in the Parliament that it would not be in the national interest to make the report public.
Mr Owaisi pointed out that he would have felt suffocated if he had been born during the reign of the Nizam’s Asaf Jahi dynasty because of its feudal system. While the Nizam’s contributions cannot be denied, the feudal system ensured that wealth was concentrated in the hands of some elite Muslims and Hindus, he said.
