With the electoral battle in Telangana increasingly turning into a bipolar contest between the BRS and the Congress both the ruling party, along with ally AIMIM, sharpened the attack on the grand old party and its state chief A Revanth Reddy.
While BRS working president KT Rama Rao, referring to the rightwing antecedents of Reddy, on Friday predicted that after the elections, he would defect to the BJP, along with Congress MLAs, the AIMIM floor leader in the Assembly Akbaruddin Owaisi taken on Rahul Gandhi.
Recent poll surveys have suggested a neck-and-neck contest between the Congress and the BRS in the upcoming elections while the BJP is lagging far behind with only one seat going its way.
Speaking at a rally yesterday, KT Rama Rao said, “Telangana people don’t need the parties that sell buy and seats and votes… Congress will win in 10 places and then Revanth Reddy will take these MLAs and join the BJP after the election.”
Rao pointed out that Revanth Reddy was with the RSS in the recent past. Akbaruddin Owaisi has been repeatedly raking up his saffron past for quite some time now. In a speech yesterday, the AIMIM leader dared the Congress leader to take a pledge at the Bhagyalakshmi temple located near the Charminar that he has nothing to do with the RSS.
Reddy was associated with the ABVP during his student days. Recalling Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s speech where he dubbed the AIMIM as BJP’s B team, the AIMIM leader wondered “how didn’t you (Rahul) notice the man in shorts (uniform of the RSS) standing by you?”
Owaisi then went on to target Rahul Gandhi for his signature slogan “Mohabbat ki Dukan (the shop of love) saying, “The shop of love and the shop of hate – both are with them.”
In this context, he recounted how former prime minister and father of Rahul Rajiv Gandhi had started his campaign from Ayodhya and the Bombay riots happened during Congress rule. He also attacked his mother, Sonia Gandhi, saying he could vouch that his forefathers were all Indian and inquiring whether Rahul Gandhi could say the same about his maternal grandmother.
Both the BRS and the Congress are vying for the Muslim votes this time around in the rest of Telangana where the AIMIM does not have its presence. Though the AIMIM contests only eight seats in Hyderabad, its campaign proves beneficial for the BRS as it swings the Muslim vote in the rest of the state. This is evident from outcome of the last Assembly elections.