AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday appealed to the electorate to remember when voting the viral video purportedly showing BJP candidate for Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat Kompella Madhavi Latha pretending to be shooting an arrow near a place of worship.
Mr. Owaisi, AIMIM’s candidate for the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat, filed his nomination on Friday at the Hyderabad District Collectorate. Later, at the first public meeting of the party’s Lok Sabha constituency campaign, he stressed the importance of increasing polling percentages.
“You are now seeing that the BJP candidate, aiming at a place of worship, a masjid, indicated [that] an arrow would be shot towards it. Will you [public] still not vote?” Mr. Owaisi asked. “If you have empathy and pain for that place of worship, ...come out to vote for the sake of the sanctity of that place [of worship].”
Mr. Owaisi said that the “imaginary shooting of an arrow” was not only aimed at the place of worship, but at the peace and tranquillity of Hyderabad. The video laid bare the BJP’s intention to weaken the peace between the Hindu and Muslim communities. “It was done to foment riots in Hyderabad,” Mr. Owaisi alleged.
He urged the public to vote so as to stop the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act and opined that it was a law that works in conjunction with the National Register of Citizens and National Population Register. “We have to cleanse Hyderabad of the BJP, and make the MIM victorious,” Mr. Owaisi said.
AIMIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi, too, urged the public to vote in large numbers and underscored the work of organisations led by the Owaisi brothers in the fields of health and education.