M Muralidhar Rao Slams MIM Over Taliban Remarks

The national General Secretary of the BJP, M Muralidhar Rao, today claimed that Telangana was home to many supporters of the Taliban, a Deobandi Islamist religious-political movement and military organisation based in Afghanistan that has recently taken over the country, and alleged that the MIM was a major supporter of the extremist group.

Addressing the media at the BJP's state headquarters, he said that MIM chief and MP Asaduddin Owaisi, who had flayed the Centre for "worrying about the women in Afghanistan" even though Indian women faced similar atrocities as well, had extended his support to the Taliban.

(The MIM chief's remarks about the Taliban left many angered - on Monday, he had said that India would have benefited from initiating a dialogue with the group before its takeover of Afghanistan.)

Rao then spoke about the "misrule" of Telangana under Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and his government, and said "Our state is suffering under the rule of the TRS. That is why state BJP head Bandi Sanjay Kumar will undertake a padayatra to usher in changes to its political scenario. After all, under the rule of the KCR regime, our once-prosperous region has gone bankrupt. Both the CM and the TRS have become synonymous with corruption. It is shameful that under him, separate Telangana activists are today being beaten up in their own state. Further, the SCs and STs too are facing injustice."

The leader claimed that the saffron party had the "power to unseat the ruling party". Targeting all the rivals of the BJP, he added that the "DNA of all the parties of the Opposition" was the same - not concerned with the welfare of the public.