The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is aiming at expanding its wings in the south, particularly in Telangana and wining maximum number of Lok Sabha seats, is silently working out a strategy to defeat MIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi.
Defeating Owaisi is one of the major objectives of the BJP’s Mission 2019, according to party spokesman Krishna Sagar Rao.
He says while the focus of the BJP is to capture power in Telangana by wining 80 assembly seats, the main objective is to win at least a dozen MP seats including that of Hyderabad.
He said the BJP’s central unit is making a plan internally to defeat Owaisi, the three-time Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad and chief of AIMIM.
“We are working on the anti-incumbency of Asaduddin Owaisi. We strongly believe that voters of Old city (stronghold of AIMIM) are hostage to AIMIM. They don’t have a choice and if they are given a clear cut choice, the entire seven Assembly segments (where AIMIM has MLAs) will vote for that alternative,” Rao said.
“The alternative is what we have achieved in Uttar Pradesh,” he said, noting BJP’s impressive performance in Deoband and other constituencies with significant Muslim population where “we won maximum number of seats without having a (single) Muslim candidate in UP.”
“Something similar is going to happen (in Hyderabad). We will emerge as a clear alternative to Asaduddin Owaisi and voters of all the seven Assembly segments (where AIMIM has MLAs) will clearly understand that alternative is going to win and they will vote for us. That’s the plan,” he said.
“Plan (to beat Owaisi) could be anything…ranging from fielding one of the tall leaders of BJP from elsewhere to anything else. That could be one of the plans,” Rao said.
