“We are no B-team. We are that side of the scale, those we tilt towards will sit on the takht (power) and those whom we abandon, will be flattened on a takhta (board),” said All India Maljis-e-Itthehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday while addressing a joint rally with backward caste leader Om Prakash Rajbhar in Balrampur.
Mr. Owaisi and Mr. Rajbhar, chief of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, are part of a Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha, a front of almost a dozen smaller parties in U.P., including outfits run by former BSP Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha and Krishna Patel, mother of BJP ally Anupriya Patel.
At the rally, Mr. Owaisi urged people to embrace the “alternate political platform” provided by the Morcha for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, as he took on the BJP government but also issued warnings to its opponents, the SP, the BSP and the Congress.
Targets CM
Mr. Owaisi targeted U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for his recent comments at an event that secularism was the biggest threat to India’s traditions getting world recognition. Mr. Owaisi advised Mr. Adityanath to read Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution and wondered if the price of diesel and petrol had touched ₹100 because of secularism.
“Instead of removing pain of the poor, U.P. CM talks of secularism,” Mr. Owaisi said. “Is this government working as per the Constitution? Is there rule of law in U.P. or rule by gun,” he asked referring to the “thok do” comments made by Mr. Adityanath and the string of killings of suspected criminals by the police since March 2017.
After success in Bihar, Mr. Owaisi hopes to replicate his performance in U.P. where roughly one-fifth of the voters are Muslims. The BJP’s opponents were also in his cross hairs.
In an apparent attack on the SP, which is arguably the strongest claimant to the Muslim vote in the State, Mr. Owaisi said, “they could not save secularism but only their families and relatives.”
The BJP’s coming to power did not cause any loss to the person who was the CM then, Mr. Owaisi said referring to former CM Akhilesh Yadav. Muslims suffered and their voices were crushed, he said. A former ally of the BJP who rebelled against the party before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Mr. Rajbhar is the chief organiser and face of the Morcha. He commands the support of the Rajbhar backward caste in East U.P. Claiming that it was due to his support that the BJP managed to form the government in U.P. in 2017, Mr. Rajbhar said now he was bent on defeating it.
“If anyone can finish the BJP government in U.P., it is Om Prakash Rajbhar,” he said.
Mr. Rajbhar asked the people to say no to divisive issues of “Hindu-Muslim, mandir-masjid and agra-pichda” and urged the people to chant “abki baar bhaichara (brotherhood) wali sarkar, abki baar shiksha (education) wali sarkar.”
