Hyderabad: AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has lashed out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her “instruction” to voters that they should not allow the “Hyderabadi man” to come and play politics there.
She reportedly asked the voters as to why they should care for someone who had supported the NDA in the past.
In a series of Tweets, Owaisi reminded Banerjee that the Trinamul chief had voted against a resolution in Parliament condemning the then Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then the Chief Minister of Gujarat, after the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Owaisi said that, on April 30, 2002, as the riot victims were huddled into camps, the Lok Sabha was discussing a motion to condemn the Gujarat pogrom. Mamata Banerjee voted against it. For the BJP, she “sold off” Gujarat's victims. “Was it for a price, was it for free or was it for a ministerial position,” Owaisi asked Banerjee.
Taking a jibe at Banerjee’s recent 'gotra' proclamation, he said, “Since I'm not part of this criminal syndicate, it's natural that Mamata is rattled. You can't buy people who have no gotra. You can't scare people who know no fear. Only criminal gangs divide up territories between themselves and attack each other when someone enters,” he said.
Owaisi asked Banerjee what exactly had she done as CM for Bengal's Muslims. Some 15 per cent of Bengal's Muslims are outside the formal education (the 3rd highest after UP & Bihar), 80 per cent live on less than Rs5000 a mongh, some 38.3 per cent in rural Bengal earn Rs2,500 a month.
More than three-fourth of Muslims have no land. Why are one-third of Murshidabad's people struggling with arsenic-related diseases? Or, did they forfeit the right to have clean drinking water because the CM has more important games to play (sic)?”
Owaisi said. “You compared proud Indian Muslims to cows, to be milked. But we're human and we weren't born just to make Mamata win. We want dignity, education, health care and political empowerment.”
“While she was hobnobbing with the RSS-BJP in 2003, we were opposing it. She became minister, CM etc after that, but what did we, the Muslims, get,” he asked.
The MIM chief claimed that it'll take 60 years for Muslims to get proportional representation in government jobs.
“Mamata went from being RSS's favourite to a self-proclaimed secularist, while a whole generation of Muslims grew up as being landless, poor and illiterate. No Hyderabadi Muslim is responsible for this. Will we continue voting for old BJP allies in exchange for the indignity and humiliation,” Owaisi asked.
“We will not, if this Hyderabadi Muslim has anything to say about it. So I'm going to question the West Bengal chief minister for doing nothing for Muslims other than creating fear. We fear and we have hope only from the Almighty,” the AIMIM leader said.
