AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi took on the Congress' Priyanka Gandhi Vadra Thursday after she accused the Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP of "working directly with the Bharatiya Janata Party" and helping the ruling outfit by splitting votes in key constituencies.
Referring to Rahul Gandhi's shock 2019 defeat - he lost the Congress bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh to senior BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani - Mr Owaisi pointed out neither his party nor he had been involved in that fight. He also attacked the Congress over "non-secular alliances" - with ex-Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's (then undivided) Shiv Sena, which he linked to the Babri Masjid demolition in UP's Ayodhya.
"Priyanka Gandhi Vadra... your brother lost Amethi. Did I come and fight there? In Maharashtra, you have an alliance with Uddhav Thackeray. Is he secular? This is the same Shiv Sena whose workers, on December 6, destroyed the Babri Masjid. Are you with them?"
"You are allied with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi... the same AAP that helped BJP remove Article 370 in J&K... and you call us 'BJP B-team'?" Mr Owaisi said at a public meeting.
"In the 2019 election you lost 92 per cent of the seats in which you were competing against the BJP. This time you are fighting 300 seats... tell me, how many do you think you will win?"
Mr Owaisi's sharp response came after Priyanka Gandhi, while campaigning in UP's Raebareli, another Congress bastion, attacked the AIMIM leader for working with the BJP.
"I am telling you again and again. Asaduddin Owaisi is working directly with the BJP. Wherever the BJP needs him to field someone to push back other parties, he is doing it. It has become very clear in Telangana elections," she told reporters.
In the run-up to the May 13 election for Telangana's 17 Lok Sabha seats, including the Hyderabad seat that has been held by Mr Owaisi's father and then himself since 1984, the Congress has frequently accused the AIMIM of being the BJP's 'B-team'.
The charge was firmly rubbished by Mr Owaisi's brother, Akbaruddin Owaisi, last month. "Some are saying AIMIM is with that team, some are saying it is with the other team. But what I am saying is that AIMIM will be where it has always been," he said at a poll rally.
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