Bengaluru: He is the only face and voice of his party. But, he is not campaigning in the elections. He has not visited Bengaluru even once in the recent months. That is the strange story of Hyderabad MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. His party MIM is contesting in 30 of the total 198 wards in the BBMP polls to be held, this Saturday. This is the first time the AIMIM is contesting in the Bengaluru city corporation polls. Since the Karnataka High court has upheld the Bengaluru City Police’s order banning the entry of Owaisi into the city citing law and order problem, he can’t enter Bengaluru to campaign for his party. But, it has not stopped him from trying his luck in the Silicon Valley of South Asia, which his hometown Hyderabad wants to follow.
The MIM has fielded about 30 candidates in the Muslim dominated wards of the city. His local leaders claim that they are targeting the Muslim and Dalit votes. The Congress is worried that Owaisi’s party might eat into its Muslim votes wherever he has fielded the candidates.
Karnataka Youth Congress president and a prominent leader of the Muslims Rizwan Arshad feels that the AIMIM won’t make any difference to Congress votes. Speaking to IBNLIVE he said “Owaisi wants to help the BJP. There has been an understanding between the BJP and Owaisi. We have explained this to our people. He has now been exposed. His party will not win even a single ward in Bengaluru”.
State BJP spokesperson S Prakash dismisses these allegations. He said “ both Owaisi and Congress are the political rivals of the BJP. The BJP and MIM are ideologically diagonally opposite entities. We represent exactly opposite ideologies. AIMIM is an anti-national party. We will never deal with such people”.
Reacting to these claims Asaduddin Owaisi has hit out at the Congress government in Karnataka for ‘deliberately’ trying to impose restrictions on his entry into Bengaluru and restricting his constitutional rights to free movement. Owaisi said that as a member of the Parliament, he has constitutional rights to enter any place in the country, and the Congress has no rights to stop him from entering the city. He said he and his party are here to stay, and will not go back from Bengaluru. He announced his party’s intention to participate in the next assembly elections in the state as well according a newspaper report.
The Congress alleges that the worried BJP has even clinched a deal with the JDS to defeat the Congress. They claim that many JDS candidates are Muslims and fielded by the BJP to damage the Congress votes in Muslim areas of the city.
However, JDS supremo and former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda has maintained that both Congress and BJP are the common enemies of his party and he stays away from both.
Owaisi may not be able win any seats. But, he has surely created some panic in the Congress camp.
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