AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi showered praise on K Chandrasekhara Rao, the Chief Minister of his home state of Telangana, which is bracing for assembly elections later this year.
The Hyderabad MP was replying to queries from journalists in Bihar's Kishanganj district, before winding up his tour of "Seemanchal", a densely populated but poverty-ridden and flood-prone region of the state.
"I must say KCR has a vision. And he has done something worthwhile during his tenure, so far," said Mr Owaisi on Sunday in reply to a question about Prime Ministerial ambitions of regional satraps like Rao. Mr Owaisi also praised KCR's counterparts in Bihar and West Bengal, Nitish Kumar and Mamata Banerjee, respectively.
"Telangana is a landlocked state. Yet it has a very impressive gross state domestic product. It used to rank the highest in terms of use of pump sets. It is still the second highest producer of fisheries," said the AIMIM Chief, whose party has seven MLAs in the 119-strong assembly.
Although KCR's party, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), enjoys a brute majority, it faces a challenge in the upcoming elections with the BJP making inroads and, according to many political experts, tipped to replace the Congress as the principal opposition in Telangana.
Mr Owaisi also lambasted the Congress and its allies for "crying democracy is in danger over what happened in Maharashtra but looking the other way when our MLAs in Bihar were lured away".
The AIMIM had won five seats in the Bihar assembly polls of 2020 and four of its MLAs joined the RJD last year, one of them even getting a cabinet berth.
Mr Owaisi said, "We wanted an alliance with Mahagathbandhan in 2020, but they derided us... Our performance was there for all to see. We had contested only 10 seats. In 2025, we will field our candidates in 50 constituencies of the 243-strong Bihar assembly".
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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